And then he got up to go, and I crept back to my room. But not a wink of sleep did I get that night for thinking over what I had heard. For though it seemed gibberish, it gave me the shivers, and that's a fact. And mad folks are often as dangerous as bad ones, so I hope your Worship will excuse me writing like this, and that you'll favour me with an answer by return, and take Master Ranulph away, for I don't like the look in the widow's eye when she looks at him, that I don't.
And hoping this finds your Worship well as it leaves me, - I am, Your Worship's humble obedient servant,
How Master Nathaniel longed to jump on to his horse and ride post-haste to the farm! But that was impossible. Instead, he immediately despatched a groom with orders to ride day and night and deliver a letter to Luke Hempen, which bade him instantly take Ranulph to the farm near Moongrass (a village that lay some fifteen miles north of Swan-on-the-Dapple) from which for years he had got his cheeses.
Then he sat down and tried to find some meaning in the mysterious conversation Luke had overheard.
Ambrose seeing a vision! An unknown Chief! Footprints on the Milky Way!
Reality was beginning to become very shadowy and menacing.
He must find out something about this widow. Had she not once appeared in the law-courts? He decided he must look her up without a moment's delay.
He had inherited from his father a fine legal library, and the book-shelves in his pipe-room were packed with volumes bound in vellum and old calf of edicts, codes, and trials. Some of them belonged to the days before printing had been introduced into Dorimare, and were written in the crabbed hand of old town-clerks.
It made the past very real, and threw a friendly, humourous light upon the dead, to come upon, when turning those yellow parchment pages, some personal touch of the old scribe's, such as a sententious or facetious insertion of his own - for instance, "The Law bides her Time, but my Dinner doesn't!" or the caricature in the margin of some forgotten judge. It was just as if one of the grotesque plaster heads on the old houses were to give you, suddenly, a sly wink.
But it was the criminal trials that, in the past, had given Master Nathaniel the keenest pleasure. The dry style of the Law was such a magnificent medium for narrative. And the little details of everyday life, the humble objects of daily use, became so startlingly vivid, when, like scarlet geraniums breaking through a thick autumn mist, they blazed out from that grey style so vivid, and, often, fraught with such tragic consequences.
Great was his astonishment when he discovered from the index that it was among the criminal trials that he must look for the widow Gibberty's. What was more, it was a trial for murder.
Surely Endymion Leer had told him, when he was urging him to send Ranulph to the farm, that it had been a quite trivial case, concerning an arrear of wages, or something, due to a discharged servant?
As a matter of fact, the plaintiff, a labourer of the name of Diggory Carp, had been discharged from the service of the late Farmer Gibberty. But the accusation he brought against the widow was that she had poisoned her husband with the sap of osiers.
However, when he had finished the trial, Master Nathaniel found himself in complete sympathy with the judge's pronouncement that the widow was innocent, and with his severe reprimand to the plaintiff, for having brought such a serious charge against a worthy woman on such slender grounds.
But he could not get Luke's letter out of his head, and he felt that he would not have a moment's peace till the groom returned with news from the farm.
As he sat that evening by the parlour fire, wondering for the hundredth time who the mysterious cloaked stranger could have been whose back had been seen by Luke, Dame Marigold suddenly broke the silence by saying, "What do you know about Endymion Leer, Nat?"
"What do I know of Endymion Leer?" he repeated absently. "Why, that he's a very good leach, with very poor taste in cravats, and, if possible, worse taste in jokes. And that, for some unknown reason, he has a spite against me"
He broke off in the middle of his sentence, and muttered beneath his breath, "By the Sun, Moon and Stars! Supposing it should be"
Luke's stranger had said he feared the Chanticleers.
A strange fellow, Leer! The Note had once sounded in his voice. Where did he come from? Who was he? Nobody knew in Lud-in-the-Mist.
And, then, there were his antiquarian tastes. They were generally regarded as a harmless, unprofitable hobby. And yet the past was dim and evil, a heap of rotting leaves. The past was silent and belonged to the Silent People But Dame Marigold was asking another question, a question that had no apparent connection with the previous one: "What was the year of the great drought?"
Master Nathaniel answered that it was exactly forty years ago, and added quizzically, "Why this sudden interest in history, Marigold?"
Again she answered by asking him a question. "And when did Endymion Leer first arrive in Dorimare?"
Master Nathaniel began to be interested. "Let me see," he said thoughtfully. "It was certainly long before we married. Yes, I remember, we called him in to a consultation when my mother had pleurisy, and that was shortly after his arrival, for he could still only speak broken Dorimarite it must be thirty years ago."
"I see," said Dame Marigold drily. "But I happen to know that he was already in Dorimare at the time of the drought." And she proceeded to repeat to him her conversation that morning with Miss Primrose.
"And," she added, "I've got another idea," and she told him about the panel in the Guildhall that sounded hollow and what the guardian had said about the woodpecker ways of Endymion Leer. "And if, partly for revenge for our coldness to him, and partly from a love of power," she went on, "it is he who has been behind this terrible affair, a secret passage would be very useful in smuggling, and would explain how all your precautions have been useless. And who would be more likely to know about a secret passage in the Guildhall than Endymion Leer!"
"By the Sun, Moon and Stars!" exclaimed Master Nathaniel excitedly, "I shouldn't be surprised if you were right, Marigold. You've got a head on your shoulders with something in it more useful than porridge!"
And Dame Marigold gave a little complacent smile.
Then he sprang from his chair, "I'm off to tell Ambrose!" he cried eagerly.
But would he be able to convince the slow and obstinate mind of Master Ambrose? Mere suspicions are hard to communicate. They are rather like the wines that will not travel, and have to be drunk on the spot.
At any rate, he could but try.
"Have you ever had a vision of Duke Aubrey, Ambrose?" he cried, bursting into his friend's pipe-room.
Master Ambrose frowned with annoyance. "What are you driving at, Nat?" he said, huffily.
"Answer my question. I'm not chaffing you, I'm in deadly earnest. Have you ever had a vision of Duke Aubrey?"
Master Ambrose moved uneasily in his chair. He was far from proud of that vision of his. "Well," he said, gruffly, "I suppose one might call it that. It was at the Academy -the day that wretched girl of mine ran away. And I was so upset that there was some excuse for what you call visions."
"And did you tell anyone about it?"
"Not I!" said Master Ambrose emphatically; then he caught himself up and added, "Oh! yes I believe I did though. I mentioned it to that spiteful little quack, Endymion Leer. I'm sure I wish I hadn't. Toasted Cheese! What's the matter now, Nat?"
For Master Nathaniel was actually cutting a caper of triumph and glee.
"I was right! I was right!" he cried joyfully, so elated by his own acumen that for the moment his anxiety was forgotten.