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“Good lord!” Burton exclaimed. “You mean to say it turned whiteovernight?”
“Jankyn and the colonel will attest to it. The day beforeyesterday, my hair was dark brown in colour.”
Burton looked at Jankyn and Lushington. They both nodded.
For a few moments, the men ate in silence. The maids hadwithdrawn, and only Bogle moved about the table, keeping the dinerswell supplied with wine and water.
“May I ask you about another matter?” Burton enquired ofTichborne.
“Of course, Sir Richard. Anything.”
“Would you tell me about the family legend-the one concerning afabulous diamond?”
“My goodness, how do you know about that?”
“Henry Arundell mentioned it. What's the story?”
“Oh, there's nothing much to it. It's whispered that mygrandfather found a large black diamond in South America. It'sutter nonsense.”
“But how did it arise?”
“From idle gossip. When Sir Henry returned from his travels, hestopped the dole and became something of a hermit, ba
“Then how do you account for his actions?”
“It's all very prosaic, I'm afraid. The a
“Ah. I see. As you say, very humdrum.”
“Yet by stopping the Dole,” Swinburne commented, “he invoked thewitch's curse.”
“Yes, the old fool!”
After supper, they spent the rest of the evening in the mainparlour, where they smoked, drank, and made plans. It was decidedthat Burton would patrol the house from midnight until three in themorning. Swinburne would then take over and patrol until dawn.
By ten o'clock, Sir Alfred, who'd been drinking without cease,was nodding off.
“I haven't slept well for days,” he slurred. “Perhaps tonightthe bloody spook will give me some peace!”
He made his apologies and stumbled off to bed.
At eleven, Bogle showed the two guests upstairs to theirbedchambers, which faced each other across a narrow hallway. Theking's agent and his assistant then convened for an hour inBurton's room.
Laying the Tichborne poem on a table, Burton took an eyeglasssuch as jewellers use from his pocket and peered through the lensat the parchment.
“As I suspected.”
“It's not genuine, is it?”
“It certainly hasn't been handed down through generations ofTichbornes, Algy. As I'm sure you recognised, the language isentirely wrong for anything predating the current century. I canconfirm that the paper and the ink are more recent than Sir Alfredthinks, too. In fact, I'd lay money on this having been written byhis grandfather, Sir Henry.”
“He should have been horsewhipped,” Swinburne opined. “Suchdoggerel is a terrible crime.”
“I can't disagree.” Burton put aside the parchment and looked athis assistant. “Sir Alfred believes this poem is about the LadyMabella, but it's obvious to you and me that it actually concernsthe South American diamond. No matter how vociferously our hostdenies its existence, the Eye of Naga is real. I suspect that whenhis grandfather stopped the dole and cut off the estate, it wasn'tjust to rebuild the house-it was to construct a hiding place.”
He held up the parchment.
“And this is a treasure map!”
S ir Richard Francis Burton, with a clockwork lantern in hishand, walked quietly through the chambers and passageways ofTichborne House, his ears alert for any sound, his eyes sca
Having just inspected the smoking room, he entered a corridorand moved toward the ballroom.
He pondered the facts of the case. He was thinking about SirAlfred's claim that he'd been hearing the knocking around the housefor “nigh on a month.” That meant the haunting began soon after theFrancois Garnier Choir Stones vanished from Brundleweed's safe, andboth those events occurred mere days before the emergence of theTichborne Claimant.
He looked at his pocket watch. It was half-past two in themorning.
“Coincidences?” he muttered. “I wonder.”
The ballroom was a big, empty, gloomy space, and his footstepsechoed as he crossed it and passed beneath a heavy chandelier. Heopened an ornate double door and stepped into another hallway. Ittook him to the rear part of the house and the gunroom, which heexamined with an ill-suppressed shudder, u
It occurred to Burton that John Speke would be in his elementhere.
A thick curtain hung over a glass-panelled door in the oppositewall. He went over, pushed it aside, and peered out past a pavedpatio to the lawn beyond. Beneath the light of a full moon, a whitemist was flowing around the house and down the slope, clingingclosely to the grass and accumulating in the lake's basin. Thewillow trees beside the water humped grotesquely out of it likeshrouded monks huddled together in malignant contemplation. Therewas, thought Burton, something horribly sentient about them.
He sneered contemptuously. Idiot! They're just trees!
He turned away and traversed the length of the chamber to a doorat its end. The portal creaked open onto a small parlour, throughwhich he passed to the music room. This was long and rectangular inshape and, like the hunting room, had a curtained door that gaveaccess to the patio.
As Burton entered, his lantern wound down and its lightstuttered and died. Thankfully, he was not plunged into pitchdarkness, for, through a chink in the curtains, a ray of moonlightangled across the chamber. Vaguely, in the faint radiance on eitherside of the bright shaft, Burton detected the outlines of violins,mandolins, and guitars hanging on the walls. A cello stood on astand in one corner and, in the middle of the floor, there was agrand piano with a cloth draped over it and an elegant candelabrumon top. Jacobean armchairs stood around the sides of the room.
He rewound his lantern. Its glare threw everything into starkrelief, the light somehow feeling like a terrible intrusion.
A full-length portrait of Sir Henry Tichborne hung over the widefireplace. He was pictured with three hunting dogs at his feet, ariding crop in one hand, and a tricorn hat in the other. He wore along beard and a severe and haughty expression.
Burton raised the lantern higher, looked at the hard, cold face,and stepped back.
Sir Henry's disapproving eyes seemed to follow him and theking's agent felt himself gripped by a curious sense ofdisquietude.
The back of his neck prickled.
“What events did you set in motion, you old goat?” he askedsoftly.
A reply came from behind: a low, quiet note from the piano, asif a string had been gently plucked.
Burton froze. The chord lingered in the air. Chill fingerstickled his spine as the sound faded with dreadful slowness.
He twisted to face the instrument and saw that he was alone inthe room.
He breathed out. The expelled air clouded in front of hisface.
To his left, there was a closed door. Something-he knew notwhat-drew his attention to it, and as he looked, he jumped, and hislantern swayed, causing shadows to jerk over the walls and ceiling.Nothing material had jolted him-just the sudden sense of a presencebehind that door.
Sir Richard Francis Burton was undoubtedly a brave man but hewas also superstitious and possessed a dread of darkness and thesupernatural. Patrolling the gloomy house had, for him, beenunsettling enough. Now, although he was faced with nothingtangible, he found himself trembling and the hairs on his headstood on end.