Part 33

"And now, Mr. Hobson," I said, throwing away the butt of my cigar, "why am I here? What have I got to do with all this ghost business?"

"I want you to stay," said Hobson, beseechingly. "To-morrow night's Christmas Eve. I've figured it out that your influence, somehow, you being of the same blood, as it were, might encourage the ghost to come out and save the reputation of the castle."

A servant brought candles, and Hobson turned to retire.

"The same blood!" I shouted after him. "What on earth is the name of the ghost?"

"When he was alive his name was--Sir Geoffray de Pierrepont," said Thaddeus Hobson, his figure fading into the dimness beyond.

I followed the servant with the candle aloft through chill and carven corridors, through galleries lined with faded portraits of forgotten lords. "Wheels!" I kept saying to myself. "The old man evidently thinks it takes a live Pierrepont to coax a dead one," and I laughed nervously as I entered the vast brown bedroom. I had to get on a chair in order to climb into the four-poster, a cheerful affair that looked like a royal funeral barge. At my head I noticed a carved device, seven mailed hands snatching at a sword with the motto: "CAVE ADSUM!"

"Beware, I am here!" I translated. Who was here? Ghosts? Fudge! What hideous scenes had this chamber beheld of yore? What might not happen here now? Where, by the way, was old Hobson's daughter, Anita? Might not anything be possible? I covered my head with the bedclothes.

* * * * *

Next morning being mild and bright for December, and Thaddeus Hobson and his mysterious daughter not having showed up for breakfast, I amused myself by inspecting the exterior of the castle. In daylight I could see that Gauntmoor, as now restored, consisted of only a portion of the original structure. On the west side, near a sheer fall of forty or fifty feet, stood the donjon tower, a fine piece of medieval barbarism with a peaked roof. And, sure enough! I saw it all now. Running along the entire west side of the castle was a wonderful wall, stretching above the moat to a dizzy height. It was no difficult matter to mount this wall from the courtyard, above which it rose no more than eight or ten feet. I ascended by a rude sentry's staircase, and once on top I gazed upward at the tall medieval prison-place, which reared above me like a clumsy stone chimney. Just as I stood, at the top of the wall, I was ten or twelve feet below the lowest window of the donjon tower. This, then, was the wall that the ancient Pierrepont had scaled, and yonder was the donjon window that he had planned to plunder on that fatal night so long ago. And this was where Pierrepont the Ghost was supposed to appear!

How the lover of spectral memory had managed to scale that wall from the outside, I could not quite make out. But once on the wall, it was no trick to snatch the damsel from her durance vile. Just drop a long rope ladder from the wall to the moat, then crawl along the narrow ledge--got to be careful with a job like that--then up to the window of the donjon keep, and away with the Lady Fair. Why, that window above the ramparts would be an easy climb for a fellow with strong arms and a little nerve, as the face of the tower from the wall to the window was studded with ancient spikes and the projecting ends of beams.

I counted the feet, one, two, three--and as I looked up at the window, a small, white hand reached out and a pink slip of paper dropped at my feet. It read:

DEAR SIR: I'm Miss Hobson. I'm locked in the donjon tower. Father always locks me here when there's a young man about. It's a horrid, uncomfortable place. Won't you hurry and go?

Yours respectfully,

A. HOBSON.

I knew it was easy. I swung myself aloft on the spikes and stones leading to the donjon window. When I was high enough I gazed in, my chin about even with the sill. And there I saw the prettiest girl I ever beheld, gazing down at a book tranquilly, as though gentlemanly rescuers were common as toads around that tower. She wore something soft and golden; her hair was night-black, and her eyes were that peculiar shade of gray that--but what's the use?

"Pardon," I said, holding on with my right hand, lifting my hat with my left. "Pardon, am I addressing Miss Annie Hobson?"

"You are not," she replied, only half looking up. "You are addressing Miss Anita Hobson. Calling me Annie is another little habit father ought to break himself of." She went on reading.

"Is that a very interesting book?" I asked, because I didn't like to go without saying something more.

"It isn't!" She arose suddenly and hurled the book into a corner. "It's Anthony Hope--and if there's anything I hate it's him. Father always gives me Prisoner of Zenda and Ivanhoe to read when he locks me into this donjon. Says I ought to read up on the situation. Do you think so?"

"There are some other books in the library," I suggested. "Bernard Shaw and Kipling, you know. I'll run over and get you one."

"That's fine--but no!" she besought, reaching out her hand to detain me. "No, don't go! If you went away you'd never come back. They never do."

"Who never do?"

"The young men. The very instant father sees one coming he pops me in the tower and turns the key. You see," she explained, "when I was in Italy I was engaged to a duke--he was a silly little thing and I was glad when he turned out bogus. But father took the deception awfully to heart and swore I should never be married for my money. Yet I don't see what else a young girl can expect," she added quite simply.

I could have mentioned several hundred things.

"He has no right!" I said sternly. "It's barbarous for him to treat a girl that way--especially his daughter."

"Hush!" she said. "Dad's a good sort. But you can't measure him by other people's standards. And yet--oh, it's maddening, this life! Day after day--loneliness. Nothing but stone walls and rusty armor and books. We're rich, but what do we get out of it? I have nobody of my own age to talk to. How the years are passing! After a while--I'll be--an old maid. I'm twenty-one now!" I heard a sob. Her pretty head was bowed in her hands.

Desperately I seized the bars of the window and miraculously they parted. I leaned across the sill and drew her hands gently down.

"Listen to me," I said. "If I break in and steal you away from this, will you go?"