Chinese -- England -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories; Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction
"Then he shall see _me_, and I'll tell him of Clarence's
wickedness. But the fan--the fan--we'll get the money and
Theophilus will come back to be loved and respected. I don't
love him, but I see we can make a lot of money together. The
fan," said Miss Pewsey counting on her lean fingers, "the money
from Lo-Keong--the money of Sophia and--"
"Oh," cried Olivia in disgust, "go away you miserable creature,
and think of the hereafter."
Miss Pewsey gave a shrill laugh. "You can't help me, and your
husband can't help me, so I'll go. But when I come back here, it
shall be as mistress. I hate you Olivia--I have always hated
you--I--I--oh you"--she could utter no more, but gasping, shook
her fist and ran out of the window and down the avenue with an
activity surprising in a women of her years.
After dinner and while they were seated in the library, Olivia
told Rupert of Miss Pewsey's visit and accusation. He declined
to believe the tale. "If Burgh was guilty he wouldn't have
brought an accusation against Forge," he said, "as the doctor,
if this is true, knows the truth. And Forge, if innocent, would
not have cleared--"
While Ainsleigh was thus explaining, the door was burst open and
Mrs. Petley, white as chalk, rushed in. "The ghost--the ghost,"
said she dropping into a chair, "the monk--in the Abbey."
Anxious to learn if there was any truth in these frequent
apparitions reported by Mrs. Petley, Rupert left the swooning
woman to the care of his wife and departed hastily from the
room. Calling old Petley, he went out of the front door across
the lawn and into the cloisters. Petley, hobbled almost on his
heels with a lantern. The young man stopped at the entrance to
the cloisters, and listened. It was raining hard and the ground
was sopping wet. But beyond the drip of the rain, and the
sighing of the trees, no sound could be heard. Snatching the
lantern from Petley, Rupert advanced boldly into the open, and
swung the light too and fro and round about. He could see no
ghost, nor any dark figure suggestive of Abbot Raoul.
"Try the black square," piped the feeble voice of Petley,
behind.
With a shrug Rupert did so. He thought that the housekeeper was
mistaken as usual, and that the ghost was the outcome of her too
vivid imagination. Walking deliberately to the black square
where Abbot Raoul had been burnt three hundred years before, he
swung the light over its bare surface. In the centre he saw
something sparkle, and stooped. Then he rose with a cry. It was
a fan. Rupert picked it up, opened it, and looked at it in the
lantern light. There were the four beads and half a bead and the
green jade leaves. The very fan itself.
CHAPTER XIX
A Visitor
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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