The Heath Hover Mystery. Mitford Bertram

Mervyn decided that he would make sure of that, and was in the act of rising with that intent when a sudden wake of drowsiness swept over him, and he fell back and slept hard until morning.

      The late sun was just rising, a red ball above the tree-tops. The ground lay shrouded in whiteness, and the dark firs and naked oak boughs were picked out in snow patterns, and the window panes were crusted with the delicate lacework of a hard frost. Mervyn shivered, and wondered apprehensively if he had caught cold in his undertaking of the night. He dressed quickly and went downstairs.

      He opened the door noiselessly and looked in. The room was in semi-darkness, for the blinds were still down. His guest was still asleep apparently, for there on the couch he lay, the rug drawn over his head. Noiselessly still, Mervyn closed the door, and went out. Then, through the back kitchen—for he would not open the front door lest the grating of the bolts should disturb the sleeper—he passed into the open air.

      The exhilaration of it in a measure braced him. The sun, mounting higher and higher, had emerged from the red ball stage into radiating beams, which touched the frosty particles on ground and tree alike into myriads of faceted diamonds. Mechanically he mounted the staircase-like path which led up to the sluice. The ice lay, a pure white triangle, narrowing away to the distantly converging woods; the break, now frozen over and newly coated with snow, hardly showing. But to this he took his way.

      Heavens! it was a mystery the man had escaped the frozen death—a marvel that he himself should have been aroused just in the very nick of time to rescue him—he now told himself standing on the bank and contemplating the spot in broad daylight. The ladder lay where it had been left, but now frozen fast into the ice. It resisted his efforts to move it. Well, it could stay where it was for the present. When old Joe turned up—by the way, the old rascal was late this morning—they would be able to move it between them, and the ice was thicker for the night’s frost, and would bear easily.

      He retraced his steps along the woodland path. The leaves crackled crisply under his tread, and hungry blackbirds shot out swiftly from the hollies, uttering alarmed cachinnations. A little red squirrel clawed itself up a tree bole, and squatting in a fork chirked angrily and impudently at him from its place of safety. But as he walked, he was puzzling hard over the strange and sinister impression which the advent of his unknown guest had instilled within his mind. In the cheery and bracing morning light and air, this seemed to strike him as sheer fancy, sheer unreasonable imagining. The man was probably quite all right; his appearance and manner were certainly not unprepossessing. He would persuade him to stay on a few days and relieve his loneliness. Why not? He was becoming altogether too self-centred, as he had told himself the night before.

      Thus musing he gained the sluice and looked down at his dwelling. The blinds of the living-room were still down. Clearly his guest was “taking it out,” and small blame to him, after his experiences of the night before. At the bottom of the stair path, the unit previously referred to as old Joe came round the end of the house.

      Old Joe, surnamed Sayers, was his outdoor male factotum—gardener—though there wasn’t much of a garden—make-himself-generally-useful, and so on. Old Judy—otherwise Christian-named Judith—was his indoor and female factotum; cook, general-do-everything there was to be done. Joe Sayers was an ancient rustic, normally towards crisp surliness inclined, except when full of extra ale—and Joe could carry a great deal of extra ale—and then he would wax confidential, not to say friendly. On him his master now opened.

      “Hard morning, Joe?”

      “Sure-ly,” came the laconic assent.

      “Is the gentleman in the sitting-room awake yet?”

      “Gemmun in settin’ room? I see nought o’ he.”

      “Well, the blinds are still down. I thought Judy might have disturbed him, not knowing he was here.”

      “She’s t’whoäm. Got roomatics. Tarr’ble hard marnin’ t’is.”

      This ancient couple only gave their services during the hours of daylight; no consideration on earth would have availed to keep them within the precincts of Heath Hover during those of darkness. They inhabited one of the labourers’ cottages referred to on the other side of the wooded hill and half a mile distant by road.

      “Can’t she come to-day then, Joe?”

      “Not to-day,” was the answer, with a very decided shake of the head. “May-be not to-marrer neither.”

      Mervyn felt vexed. How could he ask the stranger to prolong his stay when there was nobody on the premises to so much as boil a potato. And he had rather reckoned that the other would prolong his stay. In fact he wanted him to, and that, paradoxically, on all fours with that vague, undefinable instinct of apprehension which had been upon him during those sleepless night hours.

      “Look up the pond, Joe,” he said. “See that break in the ice, away there, by the two hanging ash trees. Well, I got him out of there in the middle of the night. I had to lug the ladder along to do it—we’ll have to haul it back again presently, by the way. He’d have been drowned but for it.”

      “That he would, sure-ly.” Then the intense rustic suspicion of everything and everybody unknown asserted itself—“What be he a doing there—on the ice—middle of the night? Poachin’ may be?” Mervyn laughed.

      “No—no. He’s no poacher whatever he is?”

      “And what might he be? Tell me that,” and the old countryman’s little eyes blinked with satisfaction over what he considered his own shrewdness.

      “Don’t know, I didn’t ask him and he hasn’t told me—yet. It’s a bad habit to get into—asking people questions about themselves and their private affairs, Joe. It’s a thing I don’t do.”

      The ancient slowly shook his head—pityingly, contemptuously. He thought his master little removed from a fool.

      “Folks as gets on the ice, middle of Plane Pond—middle of the night, and don’t say nothin’ as to how they gets there and what they be after, bean’t up to no good. That’s what I say, muster.” And the speaker nodded profoundly.

      “You’re a rare clever ’un, Joe,” and Mervyn laughed banteringly. “Now there’d be no great difficulty in any one, especially a stranger, losing his way in country like this, and that in the teeth of a howling sleet storm. Taking a short cut, you know, and thinking to cross the ice instead of taking all the way round? That needn’t prove he was up to no good. Eh?”

      But to this the old fellow condescended no reply. He didn’t take kindly to banter, slow witted people don’t as a rule. He spat on his palms, picked up the handles of the barrow he had come to fetch and moved off with it. His master followed him, chatting desultorily. Three or four pigs in a stye grunted shrilly as the human clement suggested morning aliment. To this was added the cacklings and flutterings of the occupants of a fowl roost, expectant of like solid advantage.

      “Mus’ Reynolds he bin around sure-ly,” chuckled old Joe, looking down on the numerous pad marks of a fox indented in the fresh snow. “Well, well, that there wire cageing’s too tough for his milk teeth. He’ll ha’ gone away wi’ an empty belly I rackon.”

      “That reminds me, Joe, that I could peck a bit myself,” laughed Mervyn, turning towards the house. It was getting quite late too, he decided, looking at his watch. It would do no harm now to awaken his guest.

      He passed in through the back, listened a moment, then softly turned the handle of the living-room door. The room was still in semi-darkness. On the couch lay the long, shadowy figure of the stranger.

      “Feel like turning out?” said Mervyn genially, but not in so loud a tone as to startle the other. But no answer came. Then stepping to the window, he raised the blind.

      The room was now flooded with light—the light of a radiant, cloudless, frosty winter day. Still the recumbent form never moved. Bending over it Mervyn dropped a hand on one shoulder. But—still no response.

      With