THE CASTLEMAINE MYSTERY.

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CHAPTER I.

      At the age of thirty-two, my relations insisted that it was time I should "settle down," as they expressed it, and I made a really determined effort to please them. I did all that a repentant, reforming bachelor might be expected to do. I bought a house, hired servants, persuaded an aunt to live with me, entertained a little, and, in short, lived for six months a life of unutterable ennui and boredom. I found myself — instead of, as heretofore, being an object of stern disapproval — becoming quite interesting to many of the fond mothers of my neighbourhood, while to myself I became the dullest of dull mortals.

      Up to then my life had at least not lacked the charm of variety. I had edited a paper — an experiment by no means without excitement; I had done some African exploration with the Germans, and, strange as it may appear, had resisted the temptation to write a book about it; and I had, as a newspaper correspondent, accompanied the British military force that failed to rescue Gordon. The fact that my father had left me well off had a good deal to do with my unsettled career. I had always contrived to earn my own living since the day I graduated, but I felt always that I was able to abandon any line of life the moment it became irksome to me, and accordingly I did so.

      Now, however, in this distasteful inactivity, I was paying the penalty for my roving life; this incomplete home existence of mine seemed altogether stale and unprofitable. I was casting anxiously about for some good excuse for escaping from it, when kind fate came to the rescue, in the shape of news that made it necessary for me to make what might be an extended trip to Ireland.

      The same post brought me a letter and an old newspaper from a Dublin lawyer. He informed me that I was next heir to a small estate in Kerry, which had belonged to ancestors of mine for over two hundred years. It had become mine now through the death of a cousin, Hugh, Maine, whose name I also bore. This Hugh Maine and I were grandsons of the same man, but our ways in life had lain so far apart that we had never met. My father, the younger son, had sought and found his fortune elsewhere, while the elder inherited the family estate and lived on it. Exactly how it came to be mine, an extract taken verbatim from the paper I spoke of will explain far better than I can. It ran as follows:

      The murder had occurred in October, and it was now the spring of the following year. I wrote at once instructing the lawyer to put caretakers in the house, if he had not already done so, and to take care that everything remained absolutely undisturbed till I had seen it; for I made up my mind that I would visit this old home of my forefathers if for no better reason than to escape from my own new one.

      A short time afterwards I found myself in the solicitor's office in Dublin. I heard that my legacy was not very valuable on account of the disturbed state of South-western Ireland, but as I was interested in it only for old associations' sake, that consideration did not weigh much with me. It seemed that my cousin's income had been derived from his mother's side of the house and reverted to it on his decease.

      "I begin to fear," said the solicitor, when we parted, "that Mr. Maine's murderer will escape justice, for the police have no clue even yet. As to caretakers for the house, the double tragedy of your cousin's murder and Miss Calhoun's subsequent death have given the old place so evil a reputation that none will sleep in it, but I have been able to bribe a man to light fires there daily during the winter."

      From Dublin I went to Stranmore by rail, and from there, five miles of narrow mountain road, winding through beautiful scenery, took me to Killalea, the village nearest to Castlemaine. The driver of my car, a stranger to that district, could tell me but few of the many things I wanted to know. We passed a large house here and there, looking empty and deserted, but all he knew of their owners was that most probably they were in Dublin or London, "dancin', 'atin', and drinkin' away the savin's av the poor tinantry." He lashed his apology for a horse viciously with every word, so for the quadruped's sake I did not further interrupt the moody silence into which he fell.

      Soon the village of tumble-down, white, thatched cottages came into view, and presently I found myself deposited with my baggage in front of the largest of them, which bore the rather pretentious name of the Maine Arms Hotel. The proprietress hurried forward in welcome to a prospective guest, but started violently and came to a sudden stop when she looked at me.

      "May the blissid Virgin protect us now!" she faltered, "but is it rale flesh and blood ye are, sor?"

      I told her I was about the hungriest ghost she had ever heard of, and made a demand for rooms and food that seemed to wonderfully reassure her.

      "Faith, yer honour, but it was the quare fright ye gave me as ye came in," said she, in explanation; "for ye have the voice and face of a man that's dead — Heaven rist his sowl! 'Tis a Maine of the ould stock ye must be, and I had heard they was all gone!"

      I told Mrs. Brady — for that was my hostess's name — that I was a cousin of the murdered Hugh Maine.

      "An' a mighty fine figure of a gintleman he was, too — jist like yersilf, the varmints!" she remarked, inconsequentially, as she hurried off to busy herself in my behalf.

      She waited on me in person at my evening meal, conversing alternately in low tones with me, and in shouts with a noisy invisible Bridget of the kitchen. When I mentioned my intention of living for a time in Castlemaine, Mrs. Brady volubly expressed her horror, and earnestly besought me to do nothing so foolish.

      "Peter Kearney," she urged "an' it's himsilf is a bowld man — lights fires in the great house in the daytime, but handfuls of shinin' gowld wouldn't tempt him to slape there. He says there are quare goin's on there at night, and that he has seen the shape av poor Miss Calhoun flittin' about the house. Wanst, too, Tim Kelly, lookin' for rabbits — that, sure, it's no sin to take, yer honour — nigh the house, heard the beautifullest singin' in the dark rooms and then the screech av a woman's sowl in pain. Not all the Castlemaine rabbits would timpt him near the house now after dark. No, yer honour, don't be despisin' the quiet bed I can give ye, and flyin' in the face av Providence by slapin' with the restless sowls av the dead."

      My landlady's harangue had exactly the opposite effect she intended it to have, for it made me very anxious to take up my abode at Castlemaine at once. If there was any truth in these stories of nightly disturbances, it was clear that some one was playing pranks for purposes of his own, and ought to be prevented. I heartily pitied these ignorant peasantry for attributing such stupid trickery to supernatural agency, little dreaming that before I was much older I was to experience startling phenomena for which I could give no rational explanation.

      Next morning I interviewed the bold Peter Kearney, who had at one time been a sort of under-butler in Castlemaine, and was therefore well acquainted with the house. I bribed him to attend to my wants during the day while I was in the old house, but no cajoling, bribery, or entreaty would prevail upon him to sleep there. He said his wife would come in for a few hours daily to do my simple cooking, and with this arrangement — a poor one, I feared — I had to be content.

      That morning I saw the house for the first time. It was built in the shape of three sides of a square, having fronts to the south, east, and west. It appeared to have grown up rather as the caprice or necessity of different owners directed, and was surrounded by grounds of considerable area. All the lower windows were French in style, reaching to the floor and opening in the middle, like doors, on to the lawns of the east and west fronts, and the terrace of the south. It was from the shrubs fringing the west lawn that the murderer of my cousin had fired his fatal bullet. An avenue of great elm trees shaded the long drive that wound from the high road to the main entrance of the house. It was raining doggedly, when I walked up the drive, and it struck me the house might well have been the scene of any tragedy or ghostly visitations, so dreary and deserted did it look.

      Inside, however, Peter's fires made things much more cheerful; but the silence of it all rather oppressed me as I made my way from room to room and loitered in the long picture gallery.

      This, then, was the home of the many Maines before me, these their portraits — I found a boyish one of my father — and these their arms in bygone, stormy days! Down this very corridor my father's childish laughter must have rung! I had much to occupy and interest me, and it was late in the afternoon when my exploration of the old house reached to the drawing-room, where the darkest chapter of my family history had been enacted.

      Everything, even to the smallest detail, had been left just as it had been on that fatal night. Here lay a piece of fancy needlework, the needle and silk still in it; there an open portfolio of sketches littered the ottoman, bearing silent testimony to the suddenness of the wild alarm that had scattered the little party assembled there.

      The piano stood open, its polished surface deep in dust, and from the music-rest a song, "The River of Years," had fluttered to the ground. The words of that song — almost the last the singer had uttered, were the last poor Hugh had heard on earth, and — yes — that dark stain near its disordered leaves upon the floor could have but the one awful explanation.

      The whole tragedy became very real to me then. I withdrew, oppressed by that kind of sensation, only a thousand times more acute, which comes over one in a quiet room when an audibly ticking clock suddenly stops, and one feels for a moment the silence that seems to cry aloud in its intensity. The stillness that months ago had fallen in that room seemed brooding in it now; reverently I closed the door, and my voice was involuntarily hushed when I gave Kearney some orders about my own quarters.

      I chose them in the east wing of the house, for the library was there, and it was in it that I intended to spend the next few weeks, buried in family history. Kearney soon prepared three rooms for me, and he and his wife proved more than able to supply all my wants. The days passed quietly on, and I enjoyed gathering what information I could of my ancestors; but after a little while the loneliness of my life began to pall upon me. My nearest neighbours, Mrs. Calhoun, her son and daughter, lived about a quarter of a mile away, but young Calhoun was absent from home, and I heard that Mrs. Calhoun was convalescent from a long illness — explanation enough for their not having called upon me, even if Castlemaine had not held the saddest memories for them. A Sir Percy Fitzgerald and his wife came over to make my acquaintance as soon as they returned to the country for the summer, and invited me to dine with them one night in the following week.

      The night before that dinner party I shall never forget. The day had been sultry, promising thunder, which never came, and the night which followed it was close and of extraordinary darkness. I retired to rest a little earlier than usual, and, leaving my door and windows open for what air there was, I soon fell into an uneasy sleep.

      I must have slept two or three hours, I suppose, when I wakened with that peculiar suddenness and thoroughly alert feeling that every one has at some time experienced. Almost at the same instant the house seemed filled with the words of a song, now loud and distinct, then fainter, and gradually growing louder again, as if the singer were moving about the house! Clearly and beautifully rendered every note rang out, but the time of night, the almost Egyptian darkness, and my inability to locate the direction of the voice, all contributed to produce an indescribably weird effect.

"Stay, steersman; oh, stay thy flight down the River of Years!  Turn, turn to the old, sweet time, far from sorrow and tears! Moor thy barque to the shelving glade, Where as children we laughed and played, Where we gathered the crimson May. Stay! Stay! Stay! Nay, said Time, we must not bide; Our way is long and the world is wide, And we must be ready to meet the tide,"

sang the voice, rising and falling in feeling with the words, becoming almost a wail with the closing words of the song, and concluding with a woman's shriek of such appalling fear that it caused the blood to stand still in my veins. Materialist though I vaunted myself, I was literally trembling with excitement. The song might be a well-played trick, but that shriek — impossible! I was never counted a nervous or superstitious man in my life, and I was soon engaged in a thorough inspection of the house, throwing my lamp's rays into every corner of all the rooms and examining the fastenings of the doors and windows. I confess I hesitated a moment on the threshold of the drawing-room; but when I did enter I found that all was just as it had been. The song of which I had just heard the words lay close beside that horrid stain upon the floor, the windows were all fastened securely. In the whole house there was not a single sign of the woman whose shriek rang even now in my ears.

      I returned, baffled and mystified, to my room, but not to sleep. I felt annoyed that anything I could not rationally explain should happen to me, of all people, and at dawn I was out making a careful examination of the exterior of the house. There again I was unsuccessful; not a trace, not a footprint rewarded my search. Determined as I was to find some perfectly natural explanation of what I had heard, I was rather surprised to find myself asking Kearney, when he came, questions about the late Miss Calhoun, to whom my cousin had been engaged; but of course I told him nothing of my experience of the night.

      "Faith, she could sing like wan of the blissid angels in heaven," said he. "She was singin' to the young master whin the blayguards shot him down be the soid av her, and" — he crossed himself fervently — "it's yer honour will be hearing her sing wan of these nights, for her sowl is onaisy till they take the varmints that killed him."

      On the whole, I wished I had not asked Peter anything. What he said was born of ignorance, and of no use in forming sensible theories of the past night's phenomenon.

      At the Fitzgeralds' that night I met several of my neighbours, and among them Mrs. and Miss Calhoun. The old lady's face was one on which the stamp of deep suffering had fallen, but it was gentle and kindly. I cannot describe Miss Calhoun; suffice it to say that as she stood before me, graceful and beautiful, in mourning for her sister, my heart went out to her on the spot. A deadly pallor passed over her features for a moment as her eyes met mine at our introduction, but she quickly flushed again, and appeared anxious to hide the fact that she was trembling violently when I placed a chair for her. While we men lingered over the table after the ladies had retired to the drawing-room, some one commented on my likeness to the dead Hugh, and then the reason for Miss Calhoun's agitation at our meeting flashed upon me. When at length we also adjourned to the drawing-room we were entertained with music by different members of the party. I found myself in conversation with Miss Calhoun, and begged her to sing for us; she hesitated a little, but presently seated herself at the piano and began "Annie Laurie."

      An exclamation of the most intense surprise half escaped me, for I then heard once more, tone for tone, the voice of the previous night.

      Lady Fitzgerald crossed over to me and rallied me upon my persuasive powers.

      "No entreaties of mine would have availed to make her sing," said she. "This is the first time we have heard her since poor Aileen died, and, beautiful though her voice is, it almost frightens me, it so much resembles hers."

      My hostess's perfectly innocent remark, coming just when it did, made quite an uncomfortable impression on me. This living voice, then, closely resembled the dead Aileen's; it certainly was the very counterpart of that which I had heard the night before.

      Was it Aileen's voice that rang through Castlemaine?

      A strange question, truly, for a rationalist to be asking of himself, and yet it would return, forcing itself upon me as often as I thrust it impatiently from my mind. For many days it worried me, but time wore on, and another much more interesting question to me took possession of my thoughts.

      I rapidly became intimate with the Calhouns. Young Reginald had returned from a yachting cruise, and seemed very glad of my companionship; but I could not disguise from myself any longer that my friendship for him and my interest in dead ancestors were as nothing compared with the regard that I felt for Margaret.

      My stay had lengthened itself out from spring, through the summer, and far into the autumn. October came, and with it the anniversary of my cousin's murder. I had gone over to the Fitzgeralds', for the sad memories of the day forbade my spending the evening at the Calhouns', as I should like to have done. It was very late when I set my face homeward, but the moon was near the full, and shone brightly, so that I quite enjoyed my leisurely two-mile walk. I was thinking much of poor Hugh as I strolled along, so that, until I was striking into the carriage-drive from the high road, I never once remembered that I had no key with me, and that the faithful Peter would have locked up as usual on leaving the house for the night.

      I had almost reached the entrance, turning over in my mind at what point I should break into my own domain, when the opening chords of "The River of Years," firmly struck on the piano, sounded from the west wing of the house.

      Spellbound, I stopped an instant to listen. As the beautiful voice I knew so well burst into the song, I was conscious of a wild desire to move forward, to solve this mystery once for all; but as the music floated out into the still night, to be caught up and carried by the breeze, till all the air and trees were full of it, my will power seemed to die away, and I remained silent and motionless, listening to the song.

      Passionately the singer lingered over the words to the last sad refrain:

"Though storms may gather and seas divide,  We must be ready to meet the tide;  But Daylight is fair, Daylight is fair —  Is fair on the other side!"

      Then came, as it had before, that awful, heartrending shriek of terror that had never really died out of my ears since I heard it first. With it my blood seemed to freeze in icy horror, and then, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, my will power came back to me, and, dashing round to the west front, I hurled myself madly against one of the drawing-room windows. The crash of rending woodwork and broken glass, then all was still — still as the white, dead face that lay there just a year ago. The room was empty and deserted; the pale, cold moonlight streamed in and showed me every detail that I knew so well, none disturbed in the slightest particular.

      Passing on quickly into the house, I turned the key in the lock and pocketed it; no one could now escape that way.

      To light a lamp and begin another thorough search of the place, from the cellars to the attics and from the attics to the cellars again, was the work of a few moments. When I had finished my examination of each room I locked it, so that no trickster might avoid me this time by escaping from room to room. Gradually the investigation was complete, and nothing, absolutely nothing, rewarded my pains. Baffled again, and in an excited and mystified condition, I retired to my room at length to bind up a badly-cut wrist, the result of my bursting in the drawing-room windows.

      Either I was the victim of extraordinary hallucination or else for the second time I had listened to something quite supernatural. I passed a wakeful, disturbed night, and was interrupted at my rather late breakfast next morning by Reginald Calhoun, who wanted me to shoot over some of his covers with him. My wrist prevented that, and as its state required some explanation, I told him the whole story of the previous night's extraordinary experience.

      I had expected him to ridicule me, but, on the contrary, he listened attentively to what I had to tell him, and sat silent and thoughtful awhile when I had concluded.

      "Say nothing about it to others at present," said he; "your having to break into the house will account for the cut. It may be that some night I'll come over and help you to solve the mystery."

      His promise sounded rather as words of course to me, and I paid no special heed to it therefore. I was all the more surprised then, about a week afterwards, to hear gravel being thrown up at my window, and, on looking out, to hear Calhoun's voice below, begging me to come down at once. In two or three minutes I was with him. It was about midnight, but the moon, just past the full, made the garden almost as light as day. "Hide here with me," said Calhoun, dragging me behind some shrubs on the east lawn, "and I believe you will soon have a solution of what has puzzled you so long."

      He was right. Very soon we both saw a woman's figure advancing by a narrow path that led from a side entrance to the Castlemaine grounds. As she stepped from the shaded path to the moonlit lawn I recognized, with intense surprise, the features of Margaret Calhoun! A smothered exclamation of astonishment caused Reginald to grip my arm and whisper:

      "Silence, now, for her sake! Watch how she enters."

      Across the lawn she glided without hesitation; then she paused an instant before the window of a room that Peter had told me was the schoolroom in old days. She touched it, and in some inexplicable way it yielded to the pressure, and she entered Castlemaine.

      "She is walking in her sleep," said her brother; "it would be dangerous to wake her now. You'll have to listen once more to all you've heard before."

      Almost as he spoke the beautiful old song began to echo through the house. We listened without speaking to the end, and though the mystery was nearly cleared up now, my heart almost stood still as I heard that awful shriek for the last time.

      Then we saw her dash wildly from the window by which she entered. It closed after her with a spring, as with flying feet she rushed headlong down the path that led to the Calhouns' house.

      Reginald, with a request that I would wait up for his return, followed her at a little distance to see that no harm befell her. While he was away I solved the mystery of that lock; it contained a small centrepiece that — set level with the woodwork and painted the same colour — was well-nigh invisible. When one touched this the window opened at once, and, as I said before, it closed with a spring. I was anxious now to know how Margaret knew the secret of the lock, and Reginald, on his return, made it all clear.

      "You must know," said he, as he sat in my room through the small hours, "that I, Aileen, Margaret, and your cousin Hugh were for two years educated by the same governess, in this house, and that lock was placed upon the schoolroom window for our convenience, to save us having to go round to the main entrance every day. That is the reason that particular window has bolts as well as a lock; the bolts cannot have been used lately. On the night of Hugh's murder we were all over here, and, by the way, had entered by the schoolroom. Margaret, not Aileen, as the newspapers said, had just finished the song you have heard so often, when the fatal shot was fired. Aileen sank at once into the swoon from which she never really recovered, but Margaret fled from the house by that very window. I think I am not betraying a sister's confidence when I tell you that I have little doubt but that Margaret felt more than a friendly interest in Hugh Maine. I suspected it long ago, and set myself to watch, on my return home, for any effects the shock might have left. It chanced that the very morning I came over to take you shooting I heard my sister expressing the utmost incredulity and surprise when her maid told her that the gown she had been wearing the evening before was torn and earth-stained. That circumstance and your story of the night set me thinking. Margaret has often, during the summer, commented on your extraordinary likeness to Hugh, and I saw by many little signs that her mind was running far too much on the sad events of a year ago. A possible solution of the mystery struck me, but I was unwilling to hint at it, until I knew it was the right one. To-day Margaret seemed unusually quiet and depressed, much as she did about a week ago, and, acting upon my theory, I set myself to watch for what might happen. I saw her steal out of the house about half-past eleven, and I rushed over here at once by the wood.

      "The rest you know. She is absolutely unconscious that in her sleep she has been reacting her part in that awful evening's work, and as we are the only people who know it, we can easily keep the secret till all the danger of its distressing her is past.

      "We must get her away from scenes which tend to induce these nervous attacks."

      The Castlemaine mystery was completely solved at last.

      Reginald Calhoun and his sister spent a year in touring on the Continent, and the end of that time found them guests at a new house which I had purchased. Bearing in mind the words of her brother that Margaret must be got right away from the scenes which induced her nervous attacks, and with the hope that I might induce her to become my wife, I sold the old estate, and bought another in county Wicklow. Everything that was of family interest in the old house was removed to my new home, and I soon settled down to my surroundings, feeling no desire to leave dear old Ireland.