The Mynns' Mystery

As he spoke in a low, hoarse, muttering tone he went through the motion of a struggle with some animal, striking at it with an imaginary stick; and then, blind to the presence of those who crept nearer to him to catch him unawares, he seemed to be binding up his injured arm.

“Only mad dogs do harm,” he said with a curious laugh, as he gazed wildly round. “Only mad dogs. Yes, but you’re dead now, brute. Only mad dogs do harm, and you were not mad, you savage beast! There! now what next – what next? Can I – can I think of anything more – the money – the watch and chain – the ring? There’s plenty without them, and some day, perhaps, some day – when he’s forgotten – Yes – George Harrington, I’m – master now. Ah!”

He uttered a wild yell, twisted completely round as if struck by a bullet, and fell face downwards upon the floor.

George Harrington was in the act of springing upon him to secure him, but the doctor caught his arm.

“No need,” he whispered; and stepping forward, he went down on one knee, the light from the guttering candle left upon a side table shining down faintly upon a distorted face, quivering in the last throes of death.

Chapter Forty One

Home!

A double inquest and a long inquiry, too, in which an intelligent British jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Saul Harrington – the most satisfactory of circumstantial evidence going to prove that he had, by a deep-laid scheme slowly insinuated himself into the good graces of the man he believed to be the cousin, who stood between him and fortune and the woman he loved. He had drugged him night after night during their drinking bouts while in the study; and during his victim’s insensibility, with diabolical ingenuity, prepared his tomb – the keys thereof being within his reach, and being replaced when he had done. Then when all was ripe on the night following his supposed start for the Continent, the victim disappeared. Saul returning and entering the house by the staircase window to find that the whiskey he had left well drugged had thoroughly done its work.

He might have let it seem to be that his victim had died of poison, but that would have meant ugly inquiries, and their intercourse and his position as heir have thrown suspicion upon him. He thought his own plan the better, and the pseudo George Harrington disappeared – his going off appearing the more natural from the fact that he had been drawing large sums of money from the estate.

The work was cunningly done, and to Saul Harrington’s brain so sure that he thought the safer way was to bury with his victim the money he had drawn; watch, chain, everything. But murderers’ brains are generally clever up to a certain point, and then shallow as that of a child.

So Saul Harrington did his work cleverly and completely, toiling at the completion of his task in the cellar with the skill of one to the manner trained; and then just before daybreak escaped down the garden to encounter an old enemy in the shape of the dog.

“It was a mere bite that would soon heal,” Saul said laughingly as he made his way to Paris, and then on to Switzerland; but it did not heal; and then came the fiction of the accident on the ice slope, then the news of something wrong at The Mynns; and he returned to play his part – a desperate one – but with a tremendous prize as reward for having helped a worthless man to a rather earlier end, when, like a thunder clap, it came upon him that his labour had been in vain. He had slain the would-be murderer of his cousin – the impostor who had struck George Harrington down, robbed him, and taken his place with sufficient ability to be received as the acknowledged heir.

Doctors argued over the question of its being genuine hydrophobia from which Saul died. A bad wound, combined with mental disturbance, certainly did cause his end; and there were those who said it was better so than through the vengeance of the law.

There is no need to dwell upon the horrors of the discovery completed by the police – of the lime and its effect, and the points by which George Harrington proved at the inquest that these were the remains of his old treacherous companion, Dan Portway.

For without seeing them he swore to there being a peculiar ridge upon the skull, the result of a tomahawk wound, and to there being either a hole or the trace of a hole in the scapula, where Nature had covered the passage through of a revolver bullet. He swore, too, that the watch found on the murdered man was made in a particular way, contained a certain inscription, and that the ring upon his finger was roughly beaten out of virgin gold, and contained his initials “GH,” and the date when he had idly formed it with a hammer and a chisel, out of a Rocky Mountain nugget.

He proved then, and afterwards by means of communication from the States, enough to satisfy the most sceptical, that he was the real George Harrington; while now the gardener could come forward with divers little bits of evidence to add to the certainty of Saul Harrington’s guilt.

“Why didn’t I say so afore?” the gardener said in the kitchen, in answer to a question, “’cause I didn’t think it was no consequence. If I see larks going on, with footmarks under windows, and holes in yew hedges, why, I thinks to myself, ‘young men will be young men, and if young gardeners goes to see young housemaids and cooks that way, it’s only nat’ral as gents with lots of money should do likewise.’ ’Cause I find a lot of my lime as I uses for the gardens been took, and my whitewash brush as I uses to do out the greenus, is it nat’ral as I should go and holler murder? No.”

Time glided on. For a whole year The Mynns had been closed, passing people stopping to gaze at the shuttered windows as seen through the open work of the great ornamental gates, and talk about the horrible murder, and the body found buried in lime in the bin of the old cellar; but after the first few weeks the faces seen peering in by old Denton grew fewer. For, asked if she would mind staying on in the house she looked up inquiringly, and said simply:

“Why? Didn’t I stop in the house when poor old master died?”

It was a little different, though, with the other servants, who held a consultation, and had nearly decided upon going, cook heading the parliament by declaring that she “couldn’t abear ghosts, though she had a slight weakness for spirits.” The gardener, however, who was present, gave it as his opinion dogmatically, that even if there were such things as ghosts, he never knew them do anyone any harm; and them as threw up good places for such “rubbidge” as that might think themselves very clever, but he was going to stay.

Hence it was that there was plenty of busy excitement and preparations at The Mynns one bright summer’s day about a year after the discovery. The shutters were open, windows clean, gravel paths freshened up with red sand, and all giving the place a cheery aspect, which had been long absent, when Mrs Hampton alighted with her husband from the station-fly, and the big bell clanged.

“Yes, Denton; I know they will not be here till seven, but I thought I’d come down and chat with you, and ask you if you had not forgotten any of my instructions.”

“You shall see, ma’am, if you’ll come in; and then, perhaps, you’ll like a bit of lunch; and why, if there isn’t Doctor Lawrence?”

“Ah. Denton; how do! Well, I call it pride – and after all these years.”

“Pride? What is?” said the old lawyer.

“You two trotting off in your station flies, and passing an old friend on the road without offering him a lift.”

“Why, how did you come down?”

“Same train, second-class. I’m not a first-class person. I only wanted to see that all was right for the young folks.”

Mrs Hampton bridled a little, and then smiled.

It was a pleasant social little lunch the old friends had together, the old lawyer praising the sherry highly.

“So much body in it,” he said, holding it up to the light.

“I hope not,” said the doctor drily, and Mrs Hampton looked horrified.

And so it was that there was plenty of familiar faces to welcome the happy pair, as they drove up to the gate at seven, Gertrude being kissed roundly by all, and George Harrington’s hand shaken, as pleasant allusions were made to the honeymoon.

Then there was an interruption in the shape of a peal of dog thunder, and Bruno, who had been let loose by Mrs Denton, dashed into the hall, upset the umbrella stand, knocked over a chair with one sweep of his tail, and then seemed to go mad with joy to see his young mistress and new master once more; his way of showing his affection for the former being by pawing at her and licking her gloves, and for the latter by butting at him ram-fashion, as if to show how sound the damaged head had grown.

He grew so boisterous at last that orders were given for his removal, but at the first intimation he uttered a doleful howl.

“Then lie down, Bruno! Watch!” cried George Harrington.

The result was that Bruno turned himself into a noble-looking ornament on the hall mat.

“Well, impostor,” said the old lawyer chuckling, “I suppose we must acknowledge you now?”

“Yes, and you, too, you wicked little impostress,” cried Doctor Lawrence. “Eh? What? Drink their healths? To be sure. Come, Mrs Hampton, let me fill your glass.”

“No, no – I couldn’t,” said the old lady. “Well, then, half full. God bless you both, my dears; and I wish the world was full of such impostors.”

“Amen,” said the two old men in a breath.

“Here’s old Denton,” cried Doctor Lawrence, seizing the decanter and a fresh glass. “Come, old lady: a glass of James Harrington’s port. Drink every drop to the health of the happy pair.”

The old lady slowly and tearfully drained, her glass, and then tried to kiss Gertrude’s hand, but it was hastily withdrawn, and the young wife’s lips were proffered in its place.

“Home, my darling,” said George, when at last they were alone. “There is no mystery about The Mynns now. Do you know, I was sorely pressed to sell it by a speculative builder, and I hesitated, feeling that it would be as well, for that you would have a repugnance to the place.”

“Oh, George!”

“Ah, I was right, then. My little wife has too much good sense to be set against it for that. The world is full of horrors.”

“Yes,” said Gertrude, laying her head upon his breast; “and yet it is full of joys.”

The End