The Lonely House

CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE OF EVIL.-1

CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE OF EVIL.

The detective had been watching for four days before he realised suddenly that the house was inhabited.

It was a sinister-looking house that stood alone upon a lonely shore in South Australia, and it lay by the margin of the waves in a little sandy cove between the dip of two high hills.

It was a place where few men came, for it was cut off from the distant townships by long, barren wastes of rock-strewn land.

There were no roads nor tracks within many miles of it, and its only highway was the dark and restless sea, forever teased and fretted by the winds that blew across the gulf.

And for four whole days he had watched it through his binoculars from the cliff less than two hundred yards away, and the whole time there had been no suggestion about it of any life within.

It was a silent house, as still and silent as the grave.

Its door had never opened, he had seen no faces from its window and no smoke had ever issued from its chimneys--yet in the falling light of dusk that evening it had flashed to him, as lightning flashes through the blackness of a midnight sky, that human beings were in hiding there.

And their hiding had been the closer because they had seen him watching.

Then they were evil-doers--they were creatures of crime.

* * * * * * * *

Exactly a week previously, and on a beautiful summer's evening towards dusk, Gilbert Larose, the best known of all the detectives of the great Commonwealth of Australia, was crouching down behind a small bush high up upon the sides of Mount Lofty, watching with an annoyed and frowning face four men who were climbing slowly up the slope towards him.

They were only about two hundred yards away, and through his binoculars he could discern plainly the expressions upon their faces. They looked alert and eager, as if they had some particular and important business on hand.

They were sturdy, thick-set men, and were all armed with stout sticks. They walked spread out, fanwise, with about ten yards between them, and they peered intently into all the bushes as they passed.

"Now if it were not impossible," muttered the detective slowly, "if it were not impossible, I would swear that they were looking for me." He nodded his head. "Yes, and they'll find me, too. I ought never to have camped with that cliff behind me. It serves me right." He glanced round quickly in every direction.

"Ah!" he ejaculated, "but that rock might save me yet, if only I could get there first."

He dropped sharply on to his hands and knees and rapidly, but with extreme caution, began to crawl towards a small rock about a hundred yards away.

"I may be able to dodge them there," he went on, "and, another chance too, they mayn't have noticed my bicycle. But what a fool I've been!"

Suddenly then he heard a shout from one of the men. "They've seen me!" exclaimed the detective disgustedly. "I knew I'd left it until too late."

But he was mistaken.

"Hell! here's a snake," called out a voice excitedly, "a big death-adder. Look out, you fellows--it'll be the very place for them here."

"Kill him." shouted someone else. "Don't run behind, you i***t! He may spring back. Hit him from the side."

There was a lot of noise, a chorus of shouting, and then the detective heard an exultant cry.

"Got him! In the middle of the back, just as he was going to turn on me too."

The detective stopped crawling, and looked round. The four men were all close together now, and bending over the ground. There was an animated discussion for a couple of minutes, and then one of them straightened himself up and gave a long look round.

"Well. I'm tired of this," he announced emphatically, "we've come quite far enough, and I'm going back on the road. I'm thirsty, and we shall be too late to get a drink if we're not quick."

There was some talking amongst the other men, and then, apparently being all in agreement, off they went at right angles to the way they had previously come.

Smiling in his relief, Larose watched them disappear, and then, after a long scrutiny to make sure that the coast was quite clear, he walked down to where they had been standing.

He found the death-adder they had killed, all fouled over now in blood and dust. The body was still quivering, and picking it up carefully, he examined the evil-looking head. He pulled the jaws wide open, and exposed the dreadful poison fangs. "Horrible," he exclaimed with a shudder. "What agonies of death lay in those little fangs! But why had it to die?" He sat down upon a bank, and with a handful of leaves, almost reverently wiped clear the body from its stains. "Yes, it is beautiful," he went on admiringly, "beautiful in its dreadful way. Its coloring and its symmetry are perfect, but I wonder--"

He paused suddenly, for out of the corner of his eye he had seen something moving among a heap of stones close by. He kept perfectly still, and a moment later a second adder glided into the open, and, raising its head off the ground, swayed itself gently from side to side.

"Evil to evil," whispered Larose very softly--"the way of the world for all time."

He reached stealthily for a piece of rock that lay near to him, and then, rising sharply to his feet, he hurled it on to the snake. The rock dropped squarely on the reptile and broke its back. It writhed viciously, but he picked up a big stone and quickly put it out of misery by battering in its head.

"His wife probably or perhaps her husband," he remarked with a sigh, "but it was best it should be so. Violence always for the enemies of the world. A stick or a stone for those that creep and crawl and then, as we get higher up, the lash, the prison, and the rope for humankind. Mercy's a mistake with evildoers. The community must protect itself." He sighed again. "And that is why such men as I have their work."

He walked back up the slope and then a thought struck him.

"But what were those men doing here?" he asked frowningly. "They couldn't have come here after rabbits, for they had no guns. What were they looking for?" He answered his own question. "Sheep probably. They have lost some sheep." He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, they won't disturb me again. I'll be off to-night. I was tired already of this place, and I feel much stronger now. Yes, I'll start for Cape Jervis, and I ought to do the seventy miles in two nights and a day."

The detective was on holiday in South Australia, but the vacation was neither of his choice nor making. It had been forced upon him by the incidence of a serious illness.

Bearing a charmed life among the desperate class in which he moved, and apparently immune always to the dangers that threatened him in pursuit of his calling, he had nevertheless fallen an easy prey to the minute typhoid bacilli, and for days had hovered between life and death. Then, convalescence supervening, he had been, ordered away for a complete rest, and Adelaide had been chosen for him as being a city least likely to remind him of his work. Adelaide was so quiet and peaceful, he had been assured. Adelaide was so law-abiding, and so rarely there did Crime lift up its baleful head.

So to South Australia, he had come, expecting to be intensely bored and wondering gloomily how he would be able to fill in his time.

Then suddenly an idea had seized him just as the train was running down through the hills into Adelaide, and he had laughed happily at the very thought of it. It was a strange and extraordinary idea, but it would provide him, he was sure, with an interesting holiday after all.

There should be no wearying hotel life for him, he told himself, no monotonous days passed in seeing the sights, no bored waiting for the holiday to end.

He knew what he would do. He would become a boy again and play at hide-and-seek. He would play a game of make-believe. He would hide himself away from everyone as if it were a matter of life or death.

He would imagine that he was an escaped convict, and would see if it were possible for him to live undiscovered and unseen in South Australia for six weeks. He would pretend that everyone was looking for him and that he himself, for once, was pitted against the law.

He would secrete himself away among the hills, in the bush upon the mountain sides, or in the lonely places on the sea-board where no one ever came.

Yes, he would creep like a phantom over South Australia, and the winning of the game would be--that no one should have set eyes on him until the time was up.

The whole adventure would be of absorbing interest, and the quietness and the solitude would be the very things that he was needing to rest his nerves.

It was typical always of Larose to make up his mind quickly, and so directly his train had drawn into the railway-station in Adelaide--he had at once set about putting his ideas into execution.

Taking only a few things from his luggage, he had left his trunk in the station cloak-room, and had then proceeded into the city to make some purchases.

He had bought a bicycle, a small camping outfit and the least quantity of provisions that he thought he would be able to make do with. A good fisherman and no mean expert in the trapping of small game, he reckoned that once well away from the city he would be easily able to provide himself with food.

He had had one good meal at the Australasian Hotel, and then in the failing light of the dusk he had slipped furtively into the Adelaide hills, and like a shadow the darkness had swallowed him up.

For seven nights and six days he had lain hidden on Mount Lofty, and, until the episode of the death-adders, no one had come near him or disturbed him.

He had made his bivouac at the base of a stretch of grey cliff near the summit. He had chosen the place there because he could light a fire and the smoke could not be seen against the color of the cliff behind him, and also because from his elevated position he could enjoy such a magnificent panorama of the wide Adelaide plains, and the miles upon miles of waving trees below.

As he had promised, he had given himself an easy restful time.

By night, he had slept the long deep slumbers of a man who was convalescing from a serious illness, and by day he had basked idly in the sun, watching a sub-conscious and disinterested sort of way the comings and goings of the great city that lay outstretched beneath him.

As the crow flies he was quite close to Adelaide, and a bare seven miles almost would have taken him into the very heart of the city itself. Through his glasses he could see plainly the trams and motors gliding through the streets and the people moving about like ants. Also, when the wind was favorable, he could hear the hourly chimes from the big clock on the Post Office opposite the Town Hall.

For four days and nights life had been quite uneventful, all peace and quiet and rest, and then on the evening of the fifth day something had happened, and henceforward a jarring note had been struck in the otherwise perfect harmony of these beautiful trees and hills.

He sensed somehow that something unusual was happening about him.

Nothing indeed that occasioned him much interest, and nothing that moved him even to speculate over-much as to its cause, but still--he felt that things were now in some subtle way different from what they had been before.

He noticed for one thing that there seemed to be more people than usual moving on the roads that led to the hills, not people in motors, but horsemen and people on foot. They seemed to hang about more, too, to be longer in view, and to be from time to time talking in groups.