SWEET NELLY GREY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4853, 1 March 1887, Page 4

SWEET NELLY GREY.

(By Alexander G. Mxjedoch.)

CHAPTER XXXVI. EAYMOJTD ROUSBY KETUKSS HOME —MOTHEB AND SON —IN THE lIBBABY—THE JIUEDEEEB CONFRONTED WITH CONSCIENCE. It was late at night when Raymond Rousby admitted himself to the cover of Clydebank Villa. He was disturbed in mind and excited in speech and gesture, and his brows worked almost conviilsively as he throw himself into an armchair iv the solitude of his room. He had just played a desperate card in a losing fame, Mid—had lost! Even Eftie Morton, his wretched victim, had rejected his bribe of gold, and the irony of her accusatory words had stung to bitter reflections his agitated mind. , The domestics of the hou.se had retired to sleep, and a quietness, almost painful, had settled on all. The light was screwed down, and lie allowed it to remain so, as best suited to the dark thoughts and passions which were coursing, like steeds of evil, through his perturbed mind and heart. Yet all was not lost. No human eye had seen him do the awful deed. Suspicion directly pointed to Morrison as the murderer of old Jonathan Selby, and dead men tell no talcs. Besides, if damning circumstances-should at the last moment fatally close around him, why, then, he had a smart pistol bullet in reserve, and, f liliug that, he had this ! And pulling a small vial from his vest pocket, he held it up against the feeble blink of gaslight overhead, which showed itself filled with a darkcolored fluid, labelled '-Poison !" " But, bah ! what am I talking about?', he suddenly exclaimed aloud, springing exctedly : to his feet, and pacing the breadth of the room. Nobody saw me shoot the frosty old curmudgeon ; nobody thinks me guilty ; and, what's still better, nobody now ever can know me to be the author of the crime." " Except me," said a, voice, hushed into suggestive secrecy of tone. Raymond Rousby wheeled about like a startled tiger, and confronted —his mother. "Ah! you here, and with accusing speech, too," he quickly said, stung to the quick by the terrible words. "Yes, my dear Raymond," said Ethel Rousby, closing the door carefully on her entrance: "I have been waiting and ■watching for your delayed return. Why did you fly ? Where have you been ? I need not tell you what has taken place here during your absence to-night. You, of course know the dreadful secret of the locked library?" "Yes, I do," firmly replied Rousby, with unabashed front; " Morrison's foul work. The " D's " are on his track, I hope, long ere this."

Ethel Rousby'e eyes returned the desperate man v look of high-lidded surprise. The hard denial slightly disconcerted her preconceived notions of her son's too obvious gvdlt. Clntcliing at the desperate hope that, after all, he might be free of the stain, of murder, she Avent close up to him and whispered a few terrible words in his ear.

Raymond Rousby, staggered to death by the accusation made, whitened under it to the very lips. " D n old Jonathan ! I thought I had left him dead, without the power to squeak," was the desperate man's halfimconscious reply." Ethel Bousby's worst fears were now fully realised. Her son was indeed the murderer of old Jonathan Selby. "Where —where, I ask, is the confession? Quick! let me see it—let me have it—this instant," and he held forth an excited hand towards his mother, who, touched to momentary regret, hid her face in her hands. It was only for a moment, however, for instantly she had recovered that self-possession which was so conspicuously a dominant attribute of her strong mind, and which very much enablod her to remain master of herself in the most trying situations and through any quantity of " china fall."

"I destroyed it—burned it," was her firmly enunciated reply. " Hah ! that's good. I'm safe with you, dear old lass, I well know. Morrison will get across the sea or swing for it; and serve the fellow right, too, for he and his foundling curse of a daughter have been the chief factors in this night's smart work. That's about all I've got to say on the matter, and curse them both for it all, say I. But what about the—eh—the—eh— that is, the body ? Has it been yet removed ? "

Briefly, but with careful minuteness of detail, Ethel Rousby detailed all that had transpired within the premises up till, at a late hour, the removal of the body by the police authorities. " Suspicion in every way clearly points to .Morrison as the author of the crime," remarked Ethel Rousby, after detailing the events already described. "And must be kept pointing, with stretched forefinger, in that same safe direction," was the ready reply. "But why that fatal pistol-shot, Raymond? "

" Ah ! ' thereby hangs a tale,' as the immortal Shakespeare phrases it. Listen, Nearer—come nearer to me. The domestics are all a-bed, I suppose ? The mother said they were. " Well, it's quite a little drama of plot and counter-plot, the events which have led up to—well, things as they are. But this is how the wind lies, and how events came about."

And, proeeedingwithhisdisclosure.«, Raymond Rousby gave his trustful mother a pretty faithful account of what had transpired, in his sight and hearing, within the library that night between Matt Morrison and old Jonathan Selby ; of the affirmation made by Morrison regarding the real parentage of his foundling daughter, Nelly Grey; of tho startling proofs submitted; of old Selby's acceptance of them, and recognition of Nelly Grey's claim on his bounty; of the promise made by him to Morrison to immediately rescind the will in Grant Selby's favor as the lawful husband of his own daughter; and, finally, of his (Raymond Rousby's) determination to threaten if not to shoot old Selby dead before he had time to see his lawyer, if no other way was left, and then to keep things safe by getting possession of the reversionary note-of-hand granted to Morrison, and so forth, up till his present return to Clydebank Villa, only half-an-hour gone. The confession of that night's black work, cruehed full as it was with unblushing crime and villainy, visibly agitated the mind of Ethel Rousby, and her son's keen eye noticed it. " Why, lass, you don't really tremble over all this, do you—you, tho ' bonnie Black Bess' of my hopes in a flight from justice—the Lady Macbeth of my late closet murder ? Oh, stuff—rubbish ! Put on a stiff countenance, lass, and the winning card is yet ours." "Nay, Raymond, I do not co much tremble over deeds done as over consequences to follow." "What! how now? Why should consequences follow—unless, indeed, after personal confession, which, of course, is a very remote possibility—eh i" "Exactly, Raymond: that's the rock our case against Morrison may at any time split on. You unfortunately had an accomplice, and we are in peril, for if Paul Derrick turns out a Judas, then we are undone." "Bah! I've cut him. off, root and branch." " Then, depend upon it, he'll cut you in return," was Ethel Rousby's quick reply. "Nay, on the contrary, he will come , fawning round me to-morrow morning for certain, asking to buy back my lost favor at any humiliating price, and—l don't know but I'll heartily kick the mean dog !" "You will not, Raymond, if you value your own personal safety. It's a dangerous game to kick even a mangy dog. Hβ may turn round and snap you." '' I have already done so in everything but the mere act." " Then you have played a dangerous card, Raymond, ami I hope no worse comes of it. Could you not buy back Derrick's goodwill and secrecy 'i " If he threatens to speak, I may." " But he may peach before he threatens," said Ethel Rousby, dreading in her keen perception the worst results. " £1 that case, old lass, I have one more secret card to play, a desperate one, it's true, bnt, good-night, and sound sleep to you, old lass; tho hour is now late, or rather early; let us retire to rest." Half unnerved by Raymond's confession of a confidant, if, indeed, not an accomplice in tho night's criminal work, Ethel Rousby retired to her bed-room at the bidding of her guilty son, and, actuated by nothing , nobler than the selfish fear of consequences, laid her head on a pillow of mental doubts and fears which allowed her only brief and troubled snatches of sleep. • Meantime, Raymond Rousby had not followed her example, but had secretly gought the |cene oi his late crime, and

presently stood, alone and unobserved, within the deep seclusion of the still bloodstained library. What peculiar feeling had induced him thereto, or what particular object he had in view in going there, Raymond Rousby_ did not for a single moment stop to consider. He felt himself impelled to do as he ha 1 done; but, once there, a chilling awe swipt in on his mind, which the dread silence of his surroundings only tended to deepen and. intensify. . " The stillness of the < h .mber was, indeed, almost supernatural. The lights had been screwed out, and save for the red heart of the smouldering fire, which threw nrouud a deep stain, as of blood, the library was in darkness. The surroundings were unchanged. There was the chair in which the murdered man had sat ko recently while listening to Morrison's story of his foundling daughter, Nelly Grey : and there was the anas behind which (Raymond Rousby) had remained hidden while the secret interview lasted. He laoked steadily at the an-as for a moment. Might not a man be hiding behind it now? revered by a guilty conscience, which makes cowards of us all, he looked towards it again, and he thought he saw it more: . With a spasmodic cry of alarm, fumt and gasping, he clutched at it, and threw it wildly aside. There was nothing behind. It was only the draught from under the doors that had stirred it. Only that, and nothing more. Yet, when once more lett alone, it seemed to sway and bulge outwards as if pressed against from the opposite side. A man had been murdered in that same room, only a few horn's before. Well what of that ? Might not his unlaid .'host haunt the chamber, stirring the hanging drapery of the chamber with j soundless, invisible touch ? "Bah!" said Raymond Rousby aloud, as these and such-like thoughts swept through his fevered brain, "ghosts only live in imagination, and never appear to human sight, except on the play-boards. Confusion to Shakespeare and Hamlet s shadowy father ! I'm beyond the stagetricks of conscience." And seizing the arras with a frenzied hand, he tore it widely apart with a force which made the brass hanging-rings scream shrilly as if stung by sharp pain, to which a faint, far-away echo succeeded with prolonged and startling distinctness. "There, d n you ! the wind will not stir you now nor stalking ghost either," he angrily said; and, defiant of conscience, he threw himself with a maniacal laugh into the murdered man's chair. " Raymond Rousby," he muttered^ half aloud, "you are not yourself to-night. The fixings of your mind are loose. Your resolution is run down. The steam pressure-n-ange of your system marks low. Take a draught of this ; it will- fix you lip a bit." And pulling forth a flask of brandy, he placed it to his lips and let a considerable portion of the fiery liquid run over his parched throat. " There, now you'll feel square for a bit —fixed up tight and trim for the night. Hallo ! what's abroad now ?" The mental start was caused by the slamming of a door somewhere in the building, which sounded hollowly all over the house, leaving thereafter a deeper and more impressive silence than ever. " Ghosts are undoubtedly about, Raymond Rousby, in spite of philosophy and brandy," he muttered. " You'd better get to your bedroom and sleep oft" your terrors. They're befooling you. one pull more, and then—to bed, to bed !'' Tims resolved, the conscience-haunted man took a fresh draught of the brandy and staggered moodily from the library. Reaching his bed-room, he threw himself despairingly on the top of the bed coverlet, without undressing himself, and soon sank into a broken and heavy sleep. But his sleep was not the balmy repose of " nature's sweet restorer." It was merely a didl stupor of the fevered senses, in wfiich were re-enacted with appalling distinctness, the tragic scenes of the preceding evening. The dread Nemesis which ever dogs the path of Crime was already on his track, and was grappling him to his doom. For no man of crime, however great or however humble his station in life, ever escaped, nor ever will escape, the just punishment which follows with sleuth-hound speed the perpetration of deeds of sin and wrong. [to be continued. - ]