Mary E. Hanshew - The Riddle of the Frozen Flame

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"Yes." The doctor's voice was rather grave. "Wynne's a queer chap and a
revengeful one. And he was as drunk as a beast to-night.... Well, boys
we'll sit down and wait awhile."

Pipes were got out and cigarettes lighted. For an hour in the hot
smoking-room the men sat, talking in undertones and smoking, or dropping
off into long silences. Finally the doctor drew out his watch. He sighed
as he looked at it.

"Three o'clock, and no sign of Wynne yet. We'll be getting our things on,
boys."

Instantly every man rose to his feet. The tension slackened with
movement. In comparative silence they stole out into the hall, threw on
their coats and hats, and then Tony West nervously slid the bolts of the
big front door. It creaked once or twice, but no sound from the still
house answered it. West swung it open, and on the whitened step they
quietly put on their shoes.

The doctor switched on an electric torch and threw a blob of light upon
the gravelled pathway for them to see the descent. Then one by one they
went quietly down the steps, and West shut the door behind them.

"Excellent! Excellent!" exclaimed Doctor Bartholomew, as the gate was
reached with no untoward happenings. "Not a soul knows we're gone, boys.
That's pretty certain. Now, then, out of the gate and turn to the right
up that lane. It'll take us to the very edge of the Fens, I believe, and
then our search will commence."

He spoke with assurance, and they followed him instinctively.
Unconsciously they had made him captain of the expedition. But--no one
had heard them, he had said? If he had looked back once when the big gate
shut, he might have changed his mind upon that score. With white face
pressed close against the glass of the smoking-room window, which looked
directly out upon the front path, stood Borkins, watching them as though
he were watching a line of ghosts on their nightly prowl.

"Good Gawd!" he ejaculated, as he discerned their dark figures and the
light of the doctor's torch. "Every one of 'em gone--_every one_!" And
then, trembling, he went back to bed.

But the doctor did not look back, and so the little party proceeded upon
its way in comparative silence until the edge of the Fens was reached.
Here, with one accord, they stopped for further instructions. Three
torches made the spot upon which they stood like daylight. The doctor
bent his eyes downward.

"Now, boys," he said briskly. "Keep your eyes sharp for footprints. Wynne
must have struck off here into the Fens, it's the most direct course. He
wouldn't have been such a duffer as to walk too far out of his way--if he
was bent upon going there at all.... Hello! Here's the squelchy mark of a
man's boot, and here's another!"

They followed the track onward, with perfect ease, for the marshy ground
was sodden and took every footprint deeply. That some man had crossed
this way, and recently, too, was perfectly plain. The footprints wavered
a little that was all, showing that the man who made them was uncertain
upon his feet. And Wynne had left the house by no means sober!

"It looks as though he had come here after all!" broke out Tony West,
excitedly. "Why the track's as plain as the nose on your face."

They zig-zagged their tedious way out across the marshy grassland, their
thin shoes squelching in the bogs, their trousers unmercifully spattered
with the thick, treacley mud. They spoke little, their eyes bent upon the
ground, their foreheads wrinkled. On and on and on they went, while the
sky above them lightened and grew murky with the soft cloudiness of
breaking dawn. The flames in the distance began to pale, and the vast
stretch of Fen district before them was shrouded in a light fog, misty,
unutterably ghostlike and with the chill lonesomeness of death.

"Whew! Eeriest task I've ever come across!" ejaculated Stark with a
grimace as he looked up for a moment into the dull mist ahead. "If
we're not all down with pneumonia to-morrow, it won't be our own
faults!... Some distance, isn't it, Doctor?"

"It is," returned the doctor grimly. "What a fool the man was to attempt
it!... Here's a footprint, and another."

Yes, and many another after that. They staggered on, wet, cold,
uncomfortable, anxious. The doctor was a little ahead of the rest of
them, Tony West came second, the others straggled a pace or two behind.
Suddenly the doctor stopped and gave a hasty exclamation:

"Good Heavens above!"

They ran up to him clustering around him in their eagerness, and
their torches lent their rays to make the thing he gazed at more
distinguishable, while another mile away at least, the flames twinkled
dimly, and slowly went out one by one as though the finger of dawn had
snuffed them like candle-ends.

"What the devil is it?" demanded Tony West, getting to his knees and
peering at the spot with narrowed eyes.

"Charred grass. And the end of the footprints!" It was the doctor who
spoke--in a queer voice sharp with excitement. "There has been a fire
here or something. And--Wynne went no farther, apparently. The ground
about it is as marshy as ever, and my own footprint is perfectly
clear.... What the dickens do you make of it, eh?"

But there was no answer forthcoming. Every man stood still staring down
at this strange thing with wide eyes. For what the doctor said was
absolute truth. The footsteps certainly _did_ end here, and in a patch of
charred grass as big round as a small table. What did it mean? What could
it mean, but one thing? Somehow, somewhere, Wynne had vanished. It was
incredible, unbelievable, and yet--there was the evidence of their own
eyes. From that spot onward the ground was wholly free of the footprints
of any man, woman, or child. No mark disturbed the sodden mud of it. And
yet--right here, where the grasses seemed to grow tallest, this patch was
burnt off and withered as though with sudden heat.

Tony West straightened himself.

"If I didn't think the whole business was a pack of lies spun into a
bigger one by a lot of village gossips, I'd--I'd begin to imagine there
was something in the story after all!" he said, getting to his feet and
looking at the white faces about him. "It's--it's devilish uncanny,
Doctor!"

"It is that." The doctor drew a long breath and stroked his beard
agitatedly. "It's so devilish uncanny that one hardly knows what to
believe. If this thing had happened in the East one might have looked
at it with a more fatalistic eye. But _here_--in England, no man in his
senses could believe such a fool's tale as that which Nigel told us
to-night. And yet--Wynne has gone, vanished! Never a trace of him,
though we'll search still farther for a while, to make sure!"

They separated at once, radiating out from that sinister spot and
searched and searched and searched. Not a footprint was to be found
beyond the spot, not a trace of any living thing. There was nothing for
it but to go back to Merriton Towers and tell their tale to Nigel.

"Old Wynne has gone, and no mistake," said Tony West, as the men began
slowly to retrace their steps across the marshlands, their faces in the
pale light of the early morning looking white and drawn with the
excitement and strain of the night. "What to make of it all, I don't
know. Apparently old Wynne went out to see the Frozen Flames and--the
Frozen Flames have swallowed him up, or burnt him up, one or the other."

"And yet I can't hold any credence in the thing, no matter how hard
I try!" said the doctor, shaking his head gravely, as they trudged on
through the mud and mire. "And if Wynne isn't found--well, there'll be
the deuce to pay with the authorities. We'll have to report to the police
first thing in the morning."

"Yes, the village constable will take the matter up, and knowing the
story, will put entire faith in it, and that's all the help we'll
get from _him_!" supplemented West with a harsh laugh. "I know the
sort.... Here's the Towers at last, and if I don't make a mistake,
there's the face of old Borkins pressed against the window!"

He ran ahead of the others and took the great stone steps two at a time.
But Borkins had opened the door before he reached it. His eyes stared,
his mouth sagged open.

"Mr. Wynne, sir? You found 'im?" he asked hoarsely.

"No. No trace whatever, Borkins. Where's your master?"

"Sir Nigel, sir? 'E's asleep, and snorin' like a grampus. This'll be a
shock to 'im sir, for sure. Mr. Wynne--_gone_? 'T ain't possible!"

But Tony had pushed by him and thrown open the smoking-room door. The
warm, heated atmosphere came to them comfortingly. He crossed to the
table, picked up a decanter and slopped out a peg of whisky. This he
drank off neat. After that he felt better. The other men straggled in
after him. He faced them with set lips.

"Now," said he, "to tell Nigel."

CHAPTER VIII

THE VICTIM

Dacre Wynne had vanished, leaving behind him no trace of mortal remains,
and only a patch of charred grass in the middle of the uninhabited Fens
to mark the spot. And Nigel Merriton, whose guest the man was, must of
necessity be told the fruitlessness of the searchers' self-appointed
task. The doctor volunteered to do it.

Tony West accompanied him as far as Nigel's, and then he suddenly
recollected that Merriton had locked it the night before. There was
nothing for it but to hammer upon the panels, or--pick the lock.

"And he'll be sleeping like a dead man, if I know anything of sleeping
draughts," said the doctor, shaking his head. "Got a penknife, West?"

West nodded. He whipped the knife out of his pocket and began
methodically to work at the worn lock with all the precision of an
experienced burglar. But the action brought no smile to his lips, no
little mocking jest to help on the job. There was something grim in the
set of West's lips, and in the tension of the doctor's slight figure.
Tragedy had stalked unnoticed into the Towers that evening and they had
become enmeshed in the folds of its cloak. They felt it in the cold
clamminess of the atmosphere, in the quiet peace of the long corridors.

Finally the thing was done. West turned the handle and the door swung
inward. The doctor crossed to the bedside and took hold of the sleeping
man's shoulder. He shook it vigorously.

"Nigel!" he called sharply once or twice. "Wake up! Wake up!"

But Merriton never moved. The performance was repeated and the call was
louder.

"Nigel! I say, wake up--wake up! We've news for you!"

The sleeping man stirred suddenly and wrenched his shoulder away.

"Let go of me, Wynne, damn you!" he broke out petulantly, his eyes
opening. "I've beaten you this time, anyhow, so part of our score is
marked off! Let go, I say--I--I--_Doctor Bartholomew_! What in Heaven's
name's the matter? I've been asleep, haven't I? What is it? You look as
though you had seen a ghost!"

He was thoroughly awake now, and struggled to a sitting position. The
doctor's face twisted wryly.

"I--wish I had, Nigel," he said bitterly. "Even ghosts would be better
than--nothing at all. We've been out searching for Wynne, and I--"

"_Been out?_"

"Yes, across the Fens. We were anxious. Wynne didn't come back, you know,
and so after we'd got you to bed we thought we'd make up a search party
among ourselves and look into the thing. But we haven't found him, Nigel.
He's vanished--completely!"

"Impossible!"

Merriton was out of bed now, still staring sleepily at them. Something in
the boyishness of him struck a chord of sympathy in the doctor's heart.
He alone of all of them had guessed at the genuineness of Nigel's fear
for Wynne, he alone had seen into the man's heart, and discovered the
half-belief that lurked there.

"I'm afraid it's perfectly true," he said quietly, as Merriton came to
him and caught him by the arm, his face white. "We followed his tracks
across the Fens--it had been raining and it was extremely easy to
do--until they suddenly ended in a patch of half-charred grass. It was
uncanny! We made a further search to make sure, but nothing rewarded our
efforts. Dacre Wynne's gone somewhere, and those devilish flames of yours
will be counting another victim to their lengthening list to-night."

"Good God!"

Merriton's lips trembled, and his fingers dropped from the doctor's arm.

"But I tell you it's impossible, man!" he broke out suddenly. "The
thing's beyond human credulity, Doctor."

"Well, be that as it may, the fact remains--Wynne's gone," returned the
doctor gloomily. "Of course we must communicate with the police. That's
the next thing to do. We'll send over to make sure Wynne isn't at the
Brellier's but I think there isn't a chance of it myself. Where he did
go beats me completely!"

"And it fair beats me, too!" said Merriton, in a shocked voice, beginning
mechanically to struggle into his clothes. "One of you might 'phone the
police--though what they'll be able to do for us I don't know. It's a
one-horse show in the village, and the chap who's chief constable was the
fellow who told me of the other man that disappeared, and seemed quite
willing to accept a supernatural explanation. Still, of course, it's the
thing to be done.... And I actually saw, with my own eyes, that new flame
flash out!"

He said the last words in a sort of undertone, but the doctor heard them,
and twitched up an enquiring eyebrow.

"You saw the new flame? Oh--of course. And you--never mind. Our next move
is to telephone the police."

But what the police could do for them was so pitifully small as to be
absurd. Constable Haggers was a man whose superstitious fear of the
flames got the better of his constabulary training in every way. He said
he would do what he could, but he would certainly attempt nothing until
broad daylight. He believed the story in every particular and said that
it was well-nigh impossible to trace the vanished man. "There had been
others," was all he would say, "and never a trace of 'em 'ave we ever
seen!"

Telephoning the Brelliers was a mere matter of minutes, and by that means
Merriton made perfectly sure that Wynne had not put in an appearance at
Withersby Hall. Brellier himself answered the phone, and said that he was
just thinking that as Wynne hadn't turned up yet, they must indeed have
been making a night of it at the Towers.

"However," he continued, "if you say you all retired around about one
o'clock, and Wynne left you soon after ten--well, I can't think what has
become of him...."

"He went out to investigate those devilish flames!" remarked Merriton, as
a rather shamefaced explanation. Then he fairly heard the wires jump with
the force of Brellier's exclamation.

"Eh--what? What's that you say? He went out to investigate the flames,
Merriton? What fool let him go? Surely you know the story?"

"We did. And we did our best to dissuade him, Mr. Brellier," replied
Merriton wearily. "But he went. You know Dacre Wynne as well as I do. He
was set upon going. But he has not come back, and some of the chaps here
set up a search-party to hunt for him. They discovered nothing. Simply
some charred grass in the middle of the Fens and the end of his
footprints.... So he didn't come round to your place then? Thanks. I'm
awfully sorry to have bothered you, but you can understand my anxiety
I know. I'll keep you posted as to any news we get. Yes--horrible, isn't
it? So--so beastly uncanny...."

He hung up the receiver with a drawn face.

"Well, Wynne didn't go there, anyway," he said to the group of men who
clustered round him. "So that's done with. Now we'll just have to possess
our souls in patience, and see what Constable Haggers can do for us. I
vote we tumble in for forty winks before the sun gets too high in the
heavens. It is the most reasonable thing to do in the circumstances."

The days that followed brought them little light upon the matter. Wynne,
it proved, was a man apparently without relations, and devoid of friends.
The local police could make nothing of it. They had had such cases
before, and were perfectly willing to let the matter rest where it
was. Interest, once so high, began to flag. The thing dropped into the
commonplace, and was soon forgotten, together with the man who had caused
it.

But Nigel was far from satisfied. That he and Dacre Wynne were really
enemies, who had posed as friends made not a particle of difference.
Dacre Wynne had disappeared during the brief time that he was a guest in
Merriton's house. The subject did not die with the owner of Merriton
Towers. He spent many long evenings with Doctor Bartholomew talking the
thing over, trying to reconstruct it, probe into it, hunt for new clues,
new anything which might lead to a solution. But such talks always came
to nothing. Every stone had already been turned, and the dry dust of the
highway afforded little knowledge to Merriton.

Across the clear sky of his happiness a cloud had gloomed, spoiling for
a time the perfection of it. He could not think of marriage while the
mystery of Dacre Wynne's death remained unsolved. It seemed unthinkable.

Tony West told him he was getting morbid about it, and to have a change.

"Come up to London and see some of your friends," was West's advice. But
Merriton never took it.

'Toinette seemed the only person who understood how he felt, and the
knowledge of this only served to draw them closer together. She, too,
felt that marriage was for the time being unthinkable, and despite
Brellier's constant urging in that direction, she held her ground firmly,
telling him that they preferred to wait awhile.

"I'm going to solve the blessed thing, 'Toinette," Nigel told her over
and over again during these long weeks and days that followed, "if I grow
gray-headed in the attempt. Dacre Wynne was no true friend of mine, but
he was my guest at the time of his disappearance, and I mean to find the
reason of it."

If he had only known what the future held in store for them both, would
he still have clung to his purpose? Who can tell?

It was at night that the thing obsessed him worst. When darkness had
fallen Merriton would sit, evening after evening, looking out upon that
same scene that he had shown his companions that eventful night. And
always the flames danced on their maddening way, mocking him, holding
behind the screen of their brilliancy the key to Dacre Wynne's
inexplicable disappearance. Merriton would sit and watch them for hours,
and sometimes find himself talking to them.

What was the matter with him? Was he going insane? Or was this Dacre
Wynne's abominable idea of a revenge for having stolen 'Toinette's heart
away from him? To have died and sent his spirit back to haunt the man he
hated seemed to Merriton sometimes the answer to the questions which
constantly puzzled him.

CHAPTER IX

THE SECOND VICTIM

The alterations at Merriton Towers were certainly a success, from the
builder's point of view at any rate. White paint had helped to dispel
some of its gloominess, though there were whose who said that the whole
place was ruined thereby. However, it was certainly an improvement to be
able to have windows that opened, and to look into rooms that beckoned
you with promises of cozy inglenooks, and plenty of brilliant sunshine.

Borkins looked upon these improvements with a censorious eye. He was one
of those who believed in "lettin' things be"; to whom innovation is a
crime, and modernity nothing short of madness. To him the dignity of the
house had gone. But when it came to Nigel installing a new staff of
servants, the good Borkins literally threw up his hands and cried aloud
in anguish. He did not hold with frilled aprons, any more than he held
with woman assuming places that were not meant for them.

But if the maids annoyed Borkins, his patience reached its breaking point
when Merriton--paying a flying visit to town--returned in company with a
short, thickset person, who spoke with a harsh, cockney accent, and whom
Merriton introduced as his "batman", "Whatever that might be," said
Borkins, holding forth to Dimmock, one of the under-grooms. James Collins
soon became a necessary part of the household machinery, a little cog in
fact upon which the great wheel of tragedy was soon to turn.

Within a week he was completely at home in his new surroundings. Collins,
in fact, was the perfect "gentleman's servant" and thus he liked always
to think himself. Many a word he and Borkins had over their master's
likes and dislikes. But invariably Collins won out. While every other
servant in the place liked him and trusted him, the sight of his honest,
red face and his ginger eyebrows was enough to make Borkins look like a
thundercloud.

The climax was reached one night in the autumn when the evening papers
failed to appear at their appointed time. Collins confronted Borkins with
the fact and got snubbed for his pains.

"'Ere you," he said--he hadn't much respect for Borkins and made no
attempt to hide the fact--"what the dooce 'as become of his lordship's
pypers? 'Ave _you_ bin 'avin' a squint at 'em, ole pieface? Jist like
your bloomin' cheek!"

"Not so much of your impidence, Mr. Collins," retorted Borkins. "When you
h'addresses a gentleman try to remember 'ow to speak to 'im. I've 'ad
nothink whatever to do with Sir Nigel's evenin' papers, and you know it.
If they're late, well, wouldn't it be worth your while to go down to the
station and 'ave a gentle word or two with one of the officials there?"

"Oh well, then, old Fiddlefyce," retorted Collins, with a good-natured
grin, "don't lose yer wool over it; you ain't got any ter spare. 'Is
Lordship's been a-arskin' fer 'em, and like as not they ain't turned up.
Let's see what's the time? 'Arf-past eight." He shook his bullet-shaped
head. "Well, I'll be doin' as you say. Slap on me 'at and jacket and myke
off ter the blinkin' stytion. What's the shortest w'y, Borkins, me
beauty?"

Borkins looked at him a moment, and his face went a dull brick colour.
Then he smirked sarcastically.

"Like as not you're so brave you wouldn't mind goin' across the Fens," he
said. "Them there flames wouldn't be scarin' such a 'ero as Mr. James
Collins. Oh no! You'll find it a mile or so less than the three miles by
road. It's the shortest cut, but I don't recommend it. 'Owever, that lies
with you. I'll tell Sir Nigel where you're gone if 'e asks me, you may be
sure!"

"Orl right! Across the Fens is the shortest, you says. Well, I'll try it
ternight and see. You're right fer once. I ain't afraid. It tykes more'n
twiddley little bits er lights ter scare James Collins, I tells yer. So
long."

Borkins, standing at the window in the dining room and peering through
the dusk at Collins' sturdy figure as it swung past him down the drive,
bit his lip a moment, and made as if to go after him.

"No, I'll be danged if I do!" he said suddenly. "If 'e knows such a lot,
well, let 'im take the risk. I warned 'im anyhow, so I've done my bit.
The flames'll do the rest." And he laughed.

But James Collins did not come back, when he ought to have done, and the
evening papers arrived before him, brought by the station-master's son
Jacob. Jacob had seen nothing of Collins, and Merriton, who did not know
that the man had gone on this errand, made no remark when the hours went
slowly by, and no sign of Collins appeared.

At eleven o'clock the household retired. Merriton, still ignorant of his
man's absence, went to bed and slept soundly. The first knowledge he
received of Collins' absence was when Borkins appeared in his bedroom in
the morning.

"Where the deuce is Collins?" Merriton said pettishly, for he did not
like Borkins, and they both knew it.

"That's exactly what I 'ave been tryin' ter find out, sir," responded
Borkins, bravely. "'E 'asn't been back since last night, so far as I
could make out."

"_Last night?_" Merriton sat bolt upright in bed and ran his fingers
through his hair. "What the dickens do you mean?"

"Collins went out last night, sir, to fetch your papers. Leastways that
was what he said he was goin' for," responded Borkins patiently, "and so
far as I knows he 'asn't returned yet. Whether he dropped into a public
'ouse on the way or not, I don't know, or whether he took the short cut
to the station across the Fens isn't for me to say. But--'e 'asn't come
back yet, sir!"

Merriton looked anxious. Collins had a strong hold upon his master's
heart. He certainly wouldn't like anything to happen to him.

"You mean to say," he said sharply, "that Collins went out last night to
fetch my papers from the station and was fool enough to take the short
cut across the Fens?"

"I warned him against doin' so," said Borkins, "since 'e said 'e'd
probably go that way. That no Frozen Flames was a-goin' ter frighten 'im,
an'--an' 'is language was most offensive. But I've no doubt 'e went."

"Then why the devil didn't you tell me last night?" exclaimed Merriton
angrily, jumping out of bed. "You knew the--the truth about Mr. Wynne's
disappearance, and yet you deliberately let that man go out to his death.
If anything's happened to James Collins, Borkins, I'll--I'll wring your
damned neck. Understand?"

Borkins went a shade or two paler, and took a step backward.

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