“You are – you are! You don’t want me to marry! I am not a fool, Dick! You stand next in the line of succession! I am going to marry Leslie Gine – understand that! You shall not break that engagement.”

For a moment the brutality, the injustice of the accusation, left the younger man white and shaking, and then, with a supreme effort, he laughed. Scenes such as this were of almost daily occurrence, but never before had Harry Alford gone so far. In ten minutes the storm would pass, and Harry would be his old lovable self, but for the moment it was bitterly hard to bear.

“Why do you say such horrible things?” he said. “I got rid of Wenner because she was not the wife for you–”

“You didn’t want me to marry! You are waiting for my shoes, a dead man’s shoes!” almost screamed the elder son. “The last thing in the world you want to see is a new Countess of Chelford. You know it, you know it!”

Dick Alford was silent. God knew his brother spoke the truth! It would be a woeful day for him when Harry Alford brought a wife to this great house to share the dreadful secret which hung like a cloud over Fossaway Manor.

4

Dick Alford was in the little study where he usually worked, a business-like room filled with filing cabinets and deed-boxes. The French windows giving to the lawn were open, for though it was September the night was warm, and he was working in his shirt-sleeves, a pipe gripped between his teeth, his eyes protected from the overhead light by a big green shade that he wore affixed by a band to his head. If there was a resemblance between Lord Chelford and his mother, not even the keenest observer could trace in Dick Alford the slightest likeness to his half-brother. He was a creature of the open, a six-foot athlete, broad of shoulder and slim of flank, and his tanned face spoke of a life spent on the windy downs. His blue eyes surveyed the footman with a quizzical smile as he pushed his battered old typewriter aside, relit his pipe and stretched himself.

“Black Abbot? Good lord! Have you seen him, Thomas?”

“No, sir, I have not seen him. But Mr Cartwright, the grocer down in Chelford village–”

He gave a graphic narrative of Mr Cartwright’s horror, amazement and confusion.

“They telephoned up from the ‘Red Lion’ to ask if his lordship had heard anything about it.” Even Thomas, who believed in nothing except Thomas, shivered. “It is the first time he has been seen for years according to all accounts, though he has been heard howling and moaning. Nobody knows who set fire to the vicarage when the parson was away at the seaside–”

“That will do, Thomas. As to Cartwright, he was drunk,” said Dick cheerily, “or else he saw a shadow.”