The Woman with One Hand, and Mr. Ely's Engagement
by Richard Marsh · English · Gutenberg #40449 · 308,246 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Woman with One Hand, and Mr. Ely's Engagement
Author: Richard Marsh
Illustrator: Stanley L. Wood
Release date: August 8, 2012 [eBook #40449]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN WITH ONE HAND, AND MR. ELY'S ENGAGEMENT ***
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NOVELS BY POPULAR AUTHORS.
* * *
Mistress Nancy Molesworth. By Joseph Hocking.
Judith Boldero. By William J. Dawson.
The Harvest of Sin. By Marie Connor Leighton.
By Roaring Loom. By J. Marshall Mather.
Paul Carah, Cornishman. By Charles Lee.
Through Battle to Promotion. By Walter Wood.
The Story of Phil Enderby. By Adeline Sergeant.
A Rose-Coloured Thread. By Jessie Mansergh.
The House by the Lock. By Mrs. C. N. Williamson.
Wanderers. By Sydney Pickering.
The 'Paradise' Coal Boat. By Cutcliffe Hyne.
The Pride of the Family. By Ethel F. Heddle.
An Idyll of the Dawn. By Mrs. Fred Reynolds.
The Birthright. By Joseph Hocking.
'And Shall Trelawney Die?' By Joseph Hocking.
Dead Selves. By Julia Magruder.
Just a Girl. By Charles Garvice.
The Charmer. By Shan F. Bullock.
A Deserter from Philistia. By E. P. Train.
Frivolities. By Richard Marsh.
Tom Ossington's Ghost. By Richard Marsh.
Lady Mary of the Dark House. By Mrs. Williamson.
The Last Lemurlan. By G. Firth Scott.
Folks from Dixie. By Paul Lawrence Dunbar.
The Rogues' Paradise. By Edwin Pugh And C. Gleig.
At Friendly Point. By G. Firth Scott.
* * *
London: JAMES BOWDEN.
BY RICHARD MARSH.
* * *
FRIVOLITIES:
For Those Who are Tired of Being Serious.
_Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 6s. 2nd Edition_.
"Brimful of fun."--_Daily Telegraph_.
"Mr. Marsh is a humorist who is genuinely funny."--_St. James's
Gazette_.
"For pure amusement we have not of late met anything to equal
'Frivolities.' The title is a little misleading, for the careless
might imagine the book to contain nothing but trifles. In reality the
stories are finished with the utmost skill. Their humour is
irresistible."--_The Yorkshire Post_.
"You do not merely smile as you read, but laugh outright, and you
laugh all the time. Deliciously funny, and could not be better
told."--_The Scotsman_.
TOM OSSINGTON'S GHOST.
_Crown Svo, cloth_, 3s. 6d.
Illustrated by Harold Piffard.
"Opens with a singularly dramatic and exciting situation, and the
interest thus at once aroused is sustained steadily to the
close."--_The Sketch_.
"Mr. Marsh has been inspired by an entirely original idea, and has
worked it out with great ingenuity. We like this weird but not
repulsive story better than anything he has ever done."--_The World_.
* * *
London: James Bowden.
THE WOMAN WITH ONE HAND
* * * * *
MR. ELY'S ENGAGEMENT
[Illustration: "THIS TIME I SUCCEEDED IN WARDING HIM OFF." (_Page_
102.)]
THE WOMAN WITH
ONE HAND
AND
Mr. Ely's Engagement
BY
RICHARD MARSH
_Author of "Frivolities," "Tom Ossington's Ghost," "In Full Cry_."
_"The Beetle: a Mystery," etc_.
_WITH FRONTISPIECE BY STANLEY L. WOOD_
SECOND EDITION
London
JAMES BOWDEN
10, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
[_All rights reserved_.]
The Woman with One Hand
CHAPTER I
AN "AGONY"
It caught my eye at once. When a man is dining off his last half-crown
he is apt to have his eyes wide open. Having just disposed of a steak
which, under the circumstances, did not seem to be so large as it
might have been, I picked up a paper which, as he had laid it down,
the diner in front appeared to have done with. As it was folded, the
agony column stared me in the face. And among the "agonies" was
this:--
"If James Southam, at one time of Dulborough, will apply to the
undersigned, he will hear of something to his advantage.--Messrs.
Cleaver and Caxton, Solicitors, Thirteen, Bacup Street, London, S.E."
Now, I am James Southam, at one time of Dulborough, but, although I do
answer to that description, a very clear something told me that if I
did hear of anything to my advantage by applying to anybody, then the
age of miracles was not yet done with. Still, as, when a man has spent
on a doubtful meal one-and-sevenpence out of his last half-crown,
something to his advantage is exactly what he wants to hear of, I
clipped that advertisement out of the paper under the waiter's nose,
and put it in my waistcoat pocket.
On referring to a directory in a convenient post-office, I found that
Bacup Street was in the neighbourhood of the Old Kent Road. That did
not seem to be a promising address, and, so far as appearances went,
it fulfilled its promise. It struck me that Bacup Street, speaking
generally, looked more than a trifle out at elbows, and Number
Thirteen seemed to be the shabbiest house which it contained. An
untidy youth received me. After keeping me waiting for a quarter of an
hour in what might have served as an apology for a cupboard, he
ushered me into a room beyond. In this inner room there were two men.
One was seated at a table, the other was standing with his hat at the
back of his head in front of the empty fireplace. They looked at me,
then they looked at each other; and, unless I am mistaken, they
exchanged a glance of surprise. The man at the table addressed me,
without evincing any desire to rise.
"Well, sir, and what can we do for you?"
"That," I said, "is what I want to know."
The man smiled, as if he was not quite sure that there was anything to
smile at. I took the newspaper cutting out of my waistcoat pocket.
"I have just seen this advertisement. I am James Southam, at one time
of Dulborough, and if you are Messrs. Cleaver and Caxton, I have come
to you to hear of something to my advantage."
For some moments my words remained unanswered. They both stared at me
as if they were endeavouring by mere force of visual inspection to
find out what sort of person I really was. Then the man at the table
spoke again.
"Of course you have evidence as to the truth of what you say?"
"I have my card in my pocket; here are letters which have been
addressed to me. If you will tell me what I am going to hear of to my
advantage I will place you in the way of obtaining a sufficiency of
any sort of evidence you may require."
I placed a card on the table, and some old envelopes, having first of
all taken out the letters. The two men forgathered. They examined my
"documents." They spoke to each other in whispers. Holding out one of
the envelopes, the man who had already spoken pointed with a stubby
and unclean first finger to the address which was on the front of it.
"Is this your present address?"
"No; at present I have no address."
"What do you mean?"
"I have been presented with the key of the street."
"Do you mean that you are impecunious?"
"I do."
The individual with the hat on who had not yet spoken to me, spoke to
me now, with a decidedly unpleasant grin. "Stone-broke?" he said.
I did not like to turn myself inside-out to strangers, especially to
such strangers: but I had recently had to do a good many things which
I had not liked. Above all, I had begun to realise the truth of the
adage which tells us that beggars must not be choosers.
"I am as nearly stone-broke as a man can be who is in possession of a
fair variety of pawn-tickets, the clothes he stands up in, and
elevenpence in cash."
There was some further whispering between the pair, then the
individual with the hat on addressed me again.
"If you will step outside, in a few minutes we will speak to you
again."
I stepped outside. They kept me outside longer than I altogether
relished.
I was on the point of, at all hazards, asserting my dignity, when the
man with the hat on, opening the door of the inner office, invited me
to enter. It was he, when I entered, who took up the conversation.
"We are not, you must understand, at liberty to furnish you with
particulars of the matter referred to in our advertisement without
first of all communicating with our client."
"Who is your client?"
"That, without having received permission, we cannot tell you either.
Can you not guess?"
The fellow stared at me in a manner which I instinctively resented.
His glance conveyed a meaning which seemed to be the reverse of
flattering.
"I certainly cannot guess, nor have I the least intention of trying. I
have the pleasure of wishing you good-day."
I turned to go; the fellow stopped me.
"One moment! Where are you off to?" I turned to him again. This time
he was eyeing me with what I felt was an insolent grin. "For a man in
the position in which you say you are you don't seem over anxious to
hear of something to your advantage."
"Nor do you seem over anxious to tell it me."
"We are solicitors, man, not principals. It is our business to act on
the instructions we have received. Listen to me." I listened. "We have
reason to believe that our client would desire to be acquainted with
your address, so that he may be able to place himself in immediate
communication with you, should you turn out to be the James Southam he
is in search of. As you don't appear, at present, to have an address
of your own, we are willing to provide you with one."
"Explain yourself."
"We will take you to an hotel, and we will guarantee your reasonable
expenses there until you hear from us again. Should you not turn out
to be the required James Southam, we will pay your bill, withdraw our
guarantee, and there will be an end of the matter, so far as we are
concerned. You will have received some advantage, at any rate."
I accepted the proposition. When the sum of elevenpence stands between
a man and starvation he is apt not to be over particular in picking
holes in proffered offers of board and lodging. The untidy youth
fetched a cab. The individual with the hat on accompanied me in it,
there and then, to one of those innumerable private hotels which are
found in the side streets off the Strand. He went inside, while I
waited for him in the cab. When he reappeared he fetched me in,
introduced me to a tall, thin woman, whom he called Mrs. Barnes, drew
me aside, told me that he had made all arrangements, that I should
hear from him again, and that, in the meantime, I should find myself
all right. Then he went, leaving me in that private hotel, for all I
knew to the contrary, a pensioner on his bounty.
CHAPTER II
THE WAITER--AND THE HAND
When I had dined--they gave me for nothing a better dinner than the
one I had had in the middle of the day for one-and-sevenpence--the
feeling that, to say the least of it, I was in an equivocal position,
began to chasten. Instead, I began to feel, as the schoolboys have it,
that I was in for a lark. That I really was going to hear, either
through Messrs. Cleaver and Caxton, or through anybody else, of
something to my advantage, I never for a moment believed. I was an
orphan. I had what I take it are the best of reasons for knowing I
have not a single living relative. I have no friends: I never had. I
was, at my mother's death, employed in an office from which I was
shortly after ignominiously ejected, owing to a difference of opinion
I was so unfortunate as to have with the senior clerk. I had spent my
substance, such as it was, and twelve months, in seeking for other
occupation.
My story was a prosaic and a sordid one. That I could hear of
something to my advantage, from any source whatever, was an idea I
utterly scouted.
I dined alone. The waiter informed me that, for the moment, I was the
only visitor in the house. No doubt, under those circumstances, I was
welcome. This waiter was a man with iron-grey hair and a pair of
curiously big, black eyes; I noticed them as he flitted about the
room, but I had much better reason to notice them a little later on.
As I rose from the table I gave outspoken utterance to words which
were a sort of tag to the sequence of my thoughts--
"Well, James Southam," I exclaimed, "you're in for it at last."
This I said out loud, foolishly, no doubt. The waiter was moving
towards the door. He had some plates in his hand; as I spoke, he
dropped these plates. They smashed to pieces on the floor. He turned
to me as if he turned on a pivot. The fashion of his countenance
changed; he glared at me as if I or he had suddenly gone mad. The
pupils of his eyes dilated--it was then I realised what curious eyes
they were.
"Who the devil are you?" he cried. "How do you know my name's James
Southam?"
I do not know how it was, but a splash of inspiration seemed all at
once to come to me--I do not know from where.
"You are James Southam," I said; "at one time of Dulborough."
I could plainly see that the man was trembling, either with fear or
with rage, and it struck me that it was with a mixture of both.
"What has that to do with you?" he gasped.
"It has this to do with me--that I want you."
An empty beer-bottle was on the table. With the rapidity of some
frantic wild animal, rushing forward he caught this bottle by the
neck, and, before I had realised his intention, he struck me with it
on the head. He was a smaller man than I, but, when next I began to
take an interest in the things of this world, I was lying on the
floor, and the room was empty. My namesake, all the evidence went to
show, had felled me like a log, and, without any sort of ceremony, had
left me where I fell.
I sat up on the floor, I put my hand to my head. It ached so badly
that I could scarcely see out of my eyes. With some difficulty I
sprang to my feet. On attaining a more or less upright position I
became conscious that the trepidation of my legs inclined me in
another direction.
"If this," I told myself, "is hearing of something to my advantage,
I've heard enough."
As I endeavoured to obtain support by leaning against the mantelpiece
the room door opened, and the tall, thin woman, whom I had been told
was Mrs. Barnes, came in.
"I beg your pardon," she began. She looked round the room, then she
looked at me. So far as I could judge in the then state of my
faculties, she appeared surprised. "I thought the waiter was here."
"He was here."
"How long has he been gone?"
"Some minutes."
"It is very odd! I have been looking for him everywhere. I thought
that he was still upstairs with you." She glanced at the ruined
crockery. "What has happened?--who has broken the plates?"
"The waiter--he dropped them. He also dropped the bottle."
I did not explain that he had dropped the latter on my head, and
almost broken it into as many pieces as the plates.
"It is very careless of him. I must see where he is."
I fancied, from the expression of her face, that she perceived that
there was more in the matter than met the eye. But, if so, she did not
give audible expression to her perceptions. She left the room, and,
when she had gone, I also left the room, and went to bed. I realised
that the complications, and, if I may be permitted to say so, the
ramifications of the situation, were for the moment beyond my grasp.
In the morning I might be able to look the position fairly in the
face, but, just then--no! I hastened to put myself between the sheets.
Scarcely was I between them than I fell asleep.
I was awakened, as it seemed to me, just after I had fallen asleep, by
some one knocking at the bedroom door. The knocking must have startled
me out of a dreamless slumber, because it was a moment or two before I
could remember where I was. Then I understood that some one was
endeavouring to attract my attention from without.
"Who's there?" I said.
"It is I, Mrs. Barnes, the landlady. I wish to speak to you."
"What, now? What time is it? Won't the morning do?
"No, I must speak to you at once."
It seemed that, in my hurry to get into bed, I had forgotten to put
the gas out. Slipping into some garments I opened the door. There
stood Mrs. Barnes, with a lighted candle in her hand. For some cause
or other she was in a state of unmistakable uneasiness. She looked
white and haggard.
"I cannot find the waiter," she said.
"You cannot find the waiter!" I stared. "I am sorry to hear it, if you
want to find him. But may I ask what that has to do with me?"
"I believe it has a good deal to do with you. What took place between
you in the coffee-room?"
"Really, I am not aware that anything took place between us in the
coffee-room that was of interest to you."
She came a step forward. Raising the lighted candle, she almost thrust
it in my face. She stared at me with strained and eager eyes. She
seemed to see something in my face: though what there was to see,
except bewilderment, was more than I could guess.
"I don't believe you. You are deceiving me. Did you quarrel with him?
Who are you? Tell me! I have a right to know--I am his wife!"
"His wife!" Complications seemed to be increasing. "I thought your
name was Barnes."
"So is his name Barnes. What has happened? What do you know about him?
Tell me."
"What do I know about him? I know nothing. So far as I am aware, I
never saw the man in my life before."
"I don't believe you--you are lying! Where has he gone, and why? You
shall tell me--I'll make you!"
She forced her way into the room; in doing so she forced me back. When
she was in, she shut the door and stood with her back to it. Her voice
had risen to a scream. Her manner almost threatened personal violence.
I felt that the hotel to which I had been introduced was conducted on
lines with which I had not been hitherto familiar.
"If, as you say, and as I have no reason to doubt, this person is your
husband, and he has really disappeared, I can understand that your
excitement is not unjustified; but you are mistaken if you suppose
that I am in any way to blame. I will tell you exactly what happened
between us." I turned aside so that I might have some sort of chance
of making up my mind as to how much, on the spur of the moment, it
might be advisable to tell her. "Your husband waited on me at dinner.
During dinner we scarcely exchanged half a dozen words. After dinner I
said something which, although it was spoken out loud, was said to
myself, but which affected him in the most extraordinary and
unexpected manner."
"What did you say?"
"I said 'I want you.'"
"You said, 'I want you'?" The woman gave a sort of nervous clutch at
the door behind her. "Are you a policeman?"
"I am nothing of the kind. You ought to know better than I what your
husband has on his conscience. I can only suppose that, for some
cause, he stands in terror of the officers of the law; because, no
sooner had I innocently uttered what, I believe, is a regular
policeman's formula, than, without a word of warning, he caught up the
empty bottle which was on the table, like a madman, and knocked me
down with it."
"Knocked you down with it!" The woman's face was as white as her own
sheets. I saw that she needed the support of the door to aid her
stand. "You said nothing to me when I came in."
"I was so astounded by the man's behaviour, and so stunned by his
violence, that I was not in a fit state for saying anything. I
intended to wait till the morning, and then have it out both with you
and with him."
"You are telling me the truth?"
"I am."
So I was, though I might not have been telling all of it. I appeared
to have told enough of it for her, because immediately afterwards she
departed--unless I err, not much easier in her mind because of the
visit she had paid to me.
In the morning, as might have been expected, I woke with a headache. I
did not feel in the best of health, either physical or mental, when I
went down to breakfast. That meal was served by a maidservant.
Bringing in a letter on a waiter, she asked if it was for me. As it
was addressed to me by name--"Mr. James Southam "--I not only claimed,
I opened it. It contained a letter and some enclosures. Here is the
letter, word for word:--
"Dear Sir,--I have just had a telegram from Messrs. Cleaver and
Caxton, acquainting me with your address. It gives me great pleasure
to write to you. I am just now detained by business, but I hope to
call on you at the very earliest opportunity, at latest in the course
of a day or two. I assure you that it will be greatly to your
advantage. As some slight guarantee of this I beg your acceptance of
the enclosed. You need have no fear. You will find in me, in all
respects, a friend.
"I will let you know, by telegram, when I am coming. Until then,
"Believe me, your sincere well-wisher,
"DUNCAN ROTHWELL."
The "enclosed" took the shape of four five-pound bank-notes. Who
"Duncan Rothwell" was I had not the faintest notion. To me the name
was wholly unfamiliar. The letter was neither addressed nor dated. The
post-mark on the envelope was Manchester. Messrs. Cleaver and Caxton
must have telegraphed so soon as I had left them, and clearly Mr.
Rothwell had written immediately on receipt of their wire. The letter
was fairly worded, but something about the writing, and indeed about
the whole get up of the thing, suggested that it had not been written
by a highly educated man--a gentleman.
In any case it seemed sufficiently clear that it was not intended for
me, until, fingering the thing, and turning it over and over, I
chanced to open the sheet of paper on which it was written. It was a
large sheet of business letter-paper. The communication was all
contained on the front page, and as there was still plenty of room to
spare, it did not occur to me that there could be additions, say, for
instance, in the shape of a postscript. It was by the purest chance
that my fidgety fingers pulled the sheet wide open. So soon as they
had done so I perceived that I was wrong. In the middle of the third
page was this:--
"P.S.--It was with great regret that I heard of your mother's lamented
death at Putney. I had the melancholy satisfaction of visiting her
grave in Wandsworth Cemetery. This will facilitate matters greatly."
Then the letter was intended for me after all. My mother had died at
Putney--she had been buried in Wandsworth Cemetery. There might,
although I had not been aware of it, have been two James Southams in
Dulborough; the coincidence was credible. But it was scarcely credible
that the other James Southam's mother could also have died at Putney,
and have been buried in Wandsworth Cemetery. Why, or in what sense, my
mother's death might facilitate matters, was more than I could say.
But, in the face of that postscript, there still seemed sufficient
doubt as to which James Southam was about to hear of something to his
advantage, to justify me in remaining where I was, and allowing events
to take their course.
As I was standing at the window, meditating whether or not I should go
for a stroll, the maidservant appeared with a message.
"Mrs. Barnes's compliments, and if you are at liberty, could she speak
to you in the private parlour?"
I was not anxious to see Mrs. Barnes. I had a suspicion that if I was
not careful I might become more involved than was desirable in her
private affairs. Still, if I remained in her house I could scarcely
avoid speaking to her. My impulse was to go to Messrs. Cleaver and
Caxton, and ask them to shift my quarters. But they might decline,
and--well, I shrugged my shoulders, and went and spoke to her.
The private parlour proved to be a small room, and a stuffy one. Mrs.
Barnes received me on the threshold. She opened the door to permit me
to enter, and having followed me in she shut it behind us.
"He has not returned," she said.
"You mean----?"
"I mean my husband."
"Frankly, I think it is almost as well that he should not have
returned--at least, while I remain an inmate of your house. You can
scarcely expect me to pass over his extraordinary behaviour in
silence."
She stood staring at me in that strained, eager manner which I had
noticed overnight. Her hands were clasped in front of her, her fingers
were twisting and untwisting themselves in what seemed pure
nervousness.
"I have been married to Mr. Barnes twelve months." As she paused, I
nodded--I did not know what else to do. "I have regretted it ever
since. There is a mystery about him."
"I am bound to admit that there is a good deal about him which is
mysterious to me; but whether it is equally mysterious to you is
another question."
"He is a mystery to me--he always has been." She paused again. She
drew in her lips as if to moisten them. "You are a stranger to me, but
I want a confidant. I must speak to some one."
"I beg that you will not make a confidant of me--I do assure you----"
As she interrupted me, her voice rose almost to a scream.
"I must speak to you--I will! I can endure no longer. Sit down and let
me speak to you."
Perceiving that, unless I made a scene, I should have to let her at
least say something, I did as she requested and sat down. I wished
that she would sit down also, instead of standing in front of the
door, twisting her hands and her body, and pulling faces--for only so
can I describe what seemed to be the nervous spasms which were
continually causing her to distort her attenuated countenance.
"I never wished to marry him," she began. "He made me."
"I suppose you mean that he made you in the sense in which all ladies,
when their time comes, are made to marry."
"No, I don't. I never wanted to marry him--never. He was almost as
great a stranger to me as you are. Why should I marry a perfect
stranger, without a penny to his name--me, who had been a single
woman, and content to be a single woman, for nearly forty years?"--I
could not tell her; I am sure I had no notion.--"This house belongs to
me; It was my mother's house before me. He came in one day and asked
me if I wanted a waiter--came in with hardly a shoe to his foot. It
was like his impudence! I did not want a waiter, and I told him so;
but he mesmerised me, and made me have him!"
"Mesmerised you, Mrs. Barnes! You are joking!"
"I'm not joking." To do her justice any one who looked less like
joking I never saw. "I've always been a nervous sort of a body.
Directly he saw me he could do anything he liked with me. He was
always mesmerising me. In less than a month he had mesmerised me into
marrying him. As soon as we were married I began to think that he was
mad!"--In that case, I told myself, that most promising couple must
have been something very like a pair!--"He was always asking me if I
would like to sell myself to the devil. He used to say that he would
arrange it for me if I wanted. Then he used to dream out loud--such
dreams! Night after night I've lain and listened to him, frightened
half out of my wits. Then he took to walking in his sleep. The only
thing he brought into the place was a little wooden box, tied up in a
pocket-handkerchief. I never could make out what was in this box. Once
when I asked him I thought he would have killed me. One night, in the
middle of a dream, he got out of bed and went downstairs. Although I
was so frightened that my knees were knocking together, I went after
him. He came in here. This box of his was in that bureau--it's in that
bureau now." She pointed to a tall, old-fashioned bureau which was
just behind my chair. "He kept muttering to himself all the time; I
could not catch all that he said, he spoke so low, but he repeated
over and over again something about the devil. He took this box of his
out of the bureau. He did something to it with his hands. What he did
I don't know. I suppose there was a secret spring about it, or
something. But though I've tried to make it out over and over again
since then, I've never been able to find the secret of it to this day.
When he handled it the top flew open. He put the box down upon that
table; and I stood watching him in the open doorway--just about where
I am standing now--without his having the least notion I was there. I
believe that, if he had known, he would have killed me."
"Do you mean to say, while he was doing all you have described, that
he was asleep?"
"Fast asleep."
"You are quite sure, Mrs. Barnes, that you also were not fast asleep?"
"Not me; I almost wish I had been. I've never had a good night's sleep
from that hour to this. I've grown that thin, for want of it, that I'm
nothing but a skeleton. As I was saying, when he had opened it he put
the box down on the table. He gave a laugh which made my blood run
cold."--She struck me as being the sort of woman whose blood on very
slight provocation would run cold.--"Then he took something out of the
box. When I saw what it was I thought I should have fainted." A
nervous paroxysm seemed to pass all over her; her voice dropped to a
whisper: "It was a woman's finger!"
"A woman's finger, Mrs. Barnes?"
"It was a woman's finger. There was a wedding-ring on it: it was too
small for the finger, so that the ring seemed to have eaten into the
flesh. He stood staring at this wedding-ring."
"What! staring! and he was fast asleep!"
"I don't know much about sleep-walkers; he was the first I ever
saw, and I hope he'll be the last. But I do know that when he was
sleep-walking his eyes were wide open, and he used to stare at things
which, I suppose, he wanted to see, in a way which was horrible to
look at. It was like that he stared at this wedding-ring. Then he
said, right out loud: 'I'll cut you off one of these fine days, and
see how you look upon my finger.' Then he put the finger down on the
table, and out of the box he took three other fingers and a thumb."
"You are quite sure they were real, genuine, human fingers, Mrs.
Barnes?"
"I know fingers when I see them, I suppose. You hear me out. He placed
them on the table, nails uppermost, close together, just as the
fingers are upon your own hand. He spoke to them. 'You'll never play
any more of your devil's tricks with me that's a certainty!' he said.
And he leered and grinned and chuckled more like a demon than a man.
Then he took something out of the box, wrapped in a piece of calico. I
saw that on the calico there were stains of blood. Out of it he took
the palm of a woman's hand. Raising it to his lips, he kissed it,
looking like the perfect devil that he was. He put it down palm
downwards on the table, and he did something to the fingers.
Then"--Mrs. Barnes gave utterance to a gasping sound, which it did not
do one good to hear--"he picked it up, and I saw that by some devil's
trickery he had joined the separate parts together, and made it look
as if it were a perfect hand."
She stopped. I do not mind owning that if I had had my way, she would
have stopped for good. Unfortunately I did not see my way to compel
her to leave her tale unfinished.
"I suppose that at that dreadful sight I must have fainted, because
the next thing I can remember is finding myself lying on the floor and
the room all dark. For some time I dared scarcely breathe, far less
move; I did not know where my husband might be. How I summoned up
courage to enable me to creep upstairs, to this hour I do not know.
When I did I found my husband fast asleep in bed."
"You really must excuse my asking, Mrs. Barnes, but do you happen to
recollect what you ate for supper that night, and are you in the habit
of suffering from nightmare?"
"Nightmare! That was the first time I watched him. I have watched him
over and over again since then. I soon found out that regularly every
Friday night he walked in his sleep, and went downstairs, and gloated
over that dreadful hand."
"You say that he did this every Friday. Are you suggesting that with
him Friday was some sort of anniversary?"
"I don't know. What was I to think? What was any one to think? Don't
laugh at me--don't! You think I am a fool, or lying. You shall see the
hand for yourself, and tell me what you make of it. I will show it
you, if I have to break his box open with a hammer."
In a state of considerable and evident excitement, she crossed the
room. I rose to enable her to approach the bureau. She took a small
canvas bag out of the pocket of her dress. Out of this bag she took
some keys.
"He has my keys. He made me give him them. He never knew that I had
duplicates. But I always have had. He seldom went outside the front
door; I think he was afraid of being seen in the streets. Whenever he
did go I used to lock myself in here, and try to find the spring which
opened the box. I had an idea that there might be something in it
which I had not seen. I will open it now, if I have to smash it into
splinters."
She let down the flap of the bureau. Within there were nests of
drawers, and one small centre cupboard. This cupboard she unlocked.
When she had done so, she gave a stifled exclamation. "It has gone!"
she said.
I stooped beside her. "What has gone?"
She turned to me a face which was ghastly in its revelation of abject
terror. Her voice had suddenly degenerated into a sort of panting
hiss.
"The box! It was here last night. After he had gone I unlocked the
bureau, and I looked, and saw it was there." She caught me by the arm,
she gripped me with a strength of which, in her normal condition, I
should imagine her incapable. "He must have come back like a thief in
the night and taken it. He may be hidden somewhere in the house this
moment. Oh, my God!"
CHAPTER III
THE MAN IN THE DOORWAY
I called at Messrs. Cleaver and Caxton's to ask what I should do with
the four five-pound notes which had arrived in the letter. The
individual who had taken me to the hotel was the only person in the
office. It seemed, from his own statement, that he was Mr. Cleaver,
the senior partner. When he learned why I had come, he laughed.
"Do with them? Why, spend them, or throw them into the river, or give
them to me."
I hesitated. The truth is, the situation threatened to become too
complicated. I had an uneasy consciousness that the something which
James Southam was to hear of might be something to his exceeding
disadvantage. I had heard enough of that sort of thing of late. I did
not wish to stand in somebody else's shoes for the sake of hearing
more. I resolved to have some sort of understanding with Mr. Cleaver.
"Who is Duncan Rothwell? Is he the client for whom you are acting?"
Mr. Cleaver was occupying himself in tearing a piece of paper into
tiny shreds with his fingers. He replied to my question with another.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because the signature attached to the letter which brought the
bank-notes is Duncan Rothwell; and, as to my knowledge, I know no
Duncan Rothwell, I should like to know who Duncan Rothwell is."
"Do you mind my looking at the letter?"
I did not mind. I let him look at it. He read it through.
"If you will take a hint from me, Mr. Southam, I think I should advise
you to restrain your not unnatural curiosity, and wait for things to
take their course."
"But, unless I am careful, I may find myself in a false position. I
may not be the required James Southam. In fact, I don't mind telling
you that I don't believe I am. I am acquainted with no Duncan
Rothwell. His whole letter is double Dutch to me. There may be dozens
of James Southams about."
"Recent inhabitants of Dulborough? I thought Dulborough was a mere
hamlet."
"So it is."
"How long did you live there?"
"I was born and bred in the place."
"Have you any relatives of your own name?"
"I have not a relative in the world."
"If, as you say, you were born and bred in such a place as Dulborough,
I presume that you had some knowledge of the inhabitants?'
"I believe I knew something of every creature in all the country
side."
"And did you know anything of another James Southam?"
"That is the queer part of it. So far as I know, I was the only
Southam thereabouts."
Mr. Cleaver laughed.
"According to your own statement, it appears that, to put it mildly,
there is at least a possibility of your being the James Southam we
have been instructed to find. Frankly, Mr. Southam, we know very
little more about the matter than you do yourself. We have simply been
instructed to discover the present address of James Southam, at one
time of Dulborough, and we have done so."
"Is that the case?"
From their manner the day before I had suspected that Messrs. Cleaver
and Caxton might be merely, as it were, lay figures, and that it was
somebody else who held the strings.
"There is something else I should like to mention: I wish to change my
hotel." Mr. Cleaver stared.
"Change your hotel? Why? Isn't it good enough?"
"It is not that exactly. It is the domestic arrangements which are not
to my taste."
"The domestic arrangements? What do you mean?"
I did not know how to explain; or rather, I did not know how much to
explain.
"What do you know of Mrs. Barnes's husband?"
"Really, Mr. Southam, your bump of curiosity appears to be fully
developed. What has Mrs. Barnes's husband to do with you--or with me?
If you don't like your present quarters you are at perfect liberty to
change them;--only in that case you must become responsible for your
own expenditure." I turned to go. "One moment. If you intend to change
your quarters, perhaps, under the circumstances, you will be so good
as to let us know where you propose to go."
"I will let you know if I do go. At any rate, until to-morrow I intend
to remain where I am."
Whether it would have been better for me, considering the tragedy
which followed, never to have returned to Mrs. Barnes's house at all,
is more than I can say. That particular tragedy might not have
happened, but, looking at the matter from a purely personal and
selfish point of view, whether that would have been better for me, or
worse, is another question altogether.
That night I went to a music-hall, changing one of Mr. Rothwell's
notes to enable me to do so. Afterwards I supped at a restaurant in
the Strand. Then I returned to the hotel to bed. I was more than half
afraid of being waylaid by Mrs. Barnes. But, to my relief, it was the
maidservant who let me in. I saw and heard nothing of the landlady. I
spent the night in peace.
A telegram was brought me the next morning after breakfast. It was
short and to the point--
"Shall be with you at twelve-thirty.--DUNCAN ROTHWELL."
As I perceived that it had been despatched from Derby station, I
concluded that Mr. Rothwell had telegraphed while in the very act of
journeying to town. Half-past twelve arrived, and no one, and nothing
came for me. About a quarter to one I went into the hall with some
vague idea of seeing if some likely looking person might be coming
down the street. The hall was really nothing but a narrow passage. The
front door was open. With his feet just inside the open doorway was a
man lying face downwards on the floor. My first impulse was to beat a
retreat, because I at once jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Barnes,
or Mr. James Southam, or whatever the landlady's mysterious husband's
name might be, had returned to the bosom of his family, not only
unpleasantly inclined, but drunk. A brief inspection from the other
end of the passage, however, made it sufficiently clear that, whoever
the recumbent individual was, it was not the gentleman who had first
waited on and then assaulted me.
I could see that he was, in every way, a larger man. His silk hat had
fallen sufficiently off his head to enable one to perceive that he was
bald. As I stood and watched him, I began to be conscious of a
curiously unpleasant feeling. He lay so still; and in such an
uncomfortable posture. He was a big, fat man; it struck me that he
must weigh some seventeen or eighteen stone. He had fallen flat upon
his stomach; his face was so close to the floor that he must have
found it difficult to breathe. His right arm was bent under him, in a
way which disagreeably suggested a broken limb. The man must surely be
something more than drunk. He must, I told myself, have fallen in a
fit.
With an indefinable feeling of repugnance, I advanced to give him aid.
I bent over him. I laid my hand upon his shoulder; I withdrew it with
a start. The man's coat was wet. I glanced at my own palm; it was
covered with some red pigment. Thoroughly aroused I sprang to my feet.
"Help! Mrs. Barnes!" I cried.
Mrs. Barnes and the maidservant came running up together.
"Mrs. Barnes," I said, still staring at the patch of red upon my hand,
"I believe there has been murder done."
"Murder! Oh, my God! Do you think he did it?"
I looked at her. I knew what she meant, but I did not answer her, "You
had better send for the police, and for a medical man."
It was the servant who retained sufficient presence of mind to catch
at my suggestion.
"Doctor Granger lives across the road. I'll fetch him!"
She did fetch him. Luckily the doctor was at home. So soon as he
learned what urgent need there was for his services, he came hurrying
to render them. Presently a policeman came upon the scene. He was
followed by others. They kept the street clear, for some distance from
the hotel, of the crowd which began rapidly to gather. The whole
house, as it were, was taken in charge.
CHAPTER IV
THE ALIAS
"This man was alive within the last few minutes." That was the doctor's
verdict. "He is still quite warm." The doctor looked at me. "What do
you know about the matter?"
"Nothing. I was expecting a visitor. As he was late, I came down from
the coffee-room, and went into the hall with the intention of seeing
if he was coming. As I was coming down the stairs I saw this man lying
on the floor."
The body had been moved into the little front room on the ground
floor, which, I afterwards learned, was used as a private
sitting-room for such visitors to the house as chose to pay for one.
There were present in the room, besides myself, the doctor, a young
man with a shrewd but kindly face, an inspector of police, a sergeant,
who kept the door, while Mrs. Barnes and the maid kept each other
close company in the corner by the fireplace. When I had answered the
doctor, the inspector questioned me upon his own account.
"What is that upon your hand?"
I held out the hand to which he referred.
"Blood! This unfortunate man's blood! When I saw him lying on the
floor my impression was that he was either drunk or in a fit. I laid
my hand upon his shoulder with a view of rousing him. Directly I did
so I found that his coat was wet. When I withdrew my hand I saw that
it was covered with blood. It was then I realised that there had been
foul play."
The dead man had been laid on the table. It was not large enough to
hold the whole of him, so that his feet hung over the edge. He was a
big man all over--in particular, he had one of the biggest heads I
ever saw. There was not a hair on the top. But on his large, fat
cheeks were what used to be called mutton-chop whiskers, which were in
colour a dirty red. He was dressed from top to toe in glossy black
broadcloth. He wore black kid gloves upon his hands. In the centre of
his wide expanse of shirtfront was, so far as I was a judge of such
things, a large diamond stud. A heavy gold chain spanned his
waistcoat.
"Is this the person you were expecting?" inquired the inspector.
"That is more than I can tell you. The person I was expecting was to
me personally a stranger."
"What was his name?"
"Duncan Rothwell. I received a telegram from him this morning to say
that he would be here by half-past twelve. Here is the telegram."
I handed it to the inspector.
"Half-past twelve. And when do you say that you discovered this man on
the floor?"
"About a quarter to one. When I gave the alarm the landlady of the
hotel and the servant came running to me immediately. They will be
able to tell you what time it was; and I should say that the doctor
was here within five minutes."
The inspector turned to the doctor.
"And what was the time, sir, when you arrived?"
"I should say as nearly as possible about ten minutes to one. I lunch
at one; I was just going to wash when I was called."
"And how long do you say, sir, he had then been dead?"
"He had probably been alive five minutes before."
"Then, in that case, he must have been alive when this man says he
entered the hall." The inspector pointed to me.
"I do not say that. The man was stabbed in the back, under the left
shoulder, probably just as he was in the act of entering the house. I
have only made a superficial examination, but I think it probable that
the blow killed him in an instant--before, that is, he could breathe
the breath which he was breathing, as it were, right out. And I do say
this, that if this gentleman had entered the hall a minute before he
actually did, he would have seen the man in the very act of being
murdered."
The inspector turned again to me.
"Where did this Mr. Duncan Rothwell live?"
"That also is more than I can tell you. The fact is, I know nothing
whatever about him. A firm of solicitors placed him in communication
with me."
"What was he coming to see you about?"
"With reference to this advertisement."
I gave the inspector the advertisement which had placed me in the
position which, so far, did not promise to be much to my advantage.
"What is your name?"
"James Southam."
"Are you the James Southam here alluded to?"
"That, again, is more than I can tell you. I saw that advertisement
the day before yesterday. I at once communicated with Messrs. Cleaver
and Caxton. Yesterday I received this letter, and this morning the
telegram which you already have."
The inspector carefully read the letter which had come to me signed
"Duncan Rothwell." Then, without asking with your leave or by your
leave, he placed the letter, the advertisement, and the telegram in
his pocket-book, and the pocket-book in his pocket. The action struck
me as extremely, and indeed unpleasantly, significant.
An examination of the dead man's pockets disclosed the somewhat
curious fact that they contained nothing but a massive gold watch,
without a maker's name; a sheaf of bank-notes, which, unenclosed in
any cover, was simply thrust in the breast-pocket of his coat, and
consisted of no less than one hundred ten-pound notes; some gold and
silver coins--four pounds, thirteen shillings, if I remember
rightly--in a plain leather purse; and, in an apparently forgotten
corner of his right-hand waistcoat pocket, was a torn scrap of a
visiting card. On it was the name, "Raymond." But the card was torn in
such a manner that, whether this was a surname or a Christian name,
there was, as the police would themselves have said, no evidence to
show. But beyond these articles there was absolutely nothing which
would serve or could be used as a means of identification. It almost
seemed as if the dead man had taken care that there should be nothing
about him by means of which he could be identified.
As soon as the inspector seemed disposed to allow me to quit his
presence I went straight away to Messrs. Cleaver and Caxton. Again I
found the senior partner alone. My appearance seemed to surprise him;
possibly in my bearing there was something which was a trifle
suggestive of the condition of my mind.
"Well, has Mr. Rothwell been?"
I shut the door behind me, looking him full in the face.
"You appear to have let me in for a nice little thing, Mr. Cleaver."
"What do you mean?"
"It is what you mean I intend to understand before I leave this room.
You will be so good as to answer me one or two questions, Mr. Cleaver.
First, is Mr. Duncan Rothwell the name of the client for whom you have
been acting?"
He leaned back in his chair, regarding me with rather a curious smile.
"You have a singular method of address, Mr. Southam. Before I answer
this question perhaps you will answer mine. Has Mr. Rothwell been to
see you?"
"What does he look like?"
"Look like!" Again the curious smile. "You continue to answer question
with question. Tell me, sir, has any one calling himself Duncan
Rothwell been to see you? We will discuss the question of what he
looked like afterwards."
I paused before I spoke again, then keenly noted the effect of my
words.
"For all I know, Mr. Duncan Rothwell lies murdered at Mrs. Barnes's
hotel."
Mr. Cleaver sprang to his feet. "Murdered!"
"Precisely! Some one lies there murdered. If you will tell me what he
looks like I will tell you if it is Mr. Duncan Rothwell."
Not unnaturally, Mr. Cleaver appeared bewildered.
"Explain yourself a little more clearly, Mr. Southam; and, to begin
with, will you be so good as to answer Yes or No to my question. Has
any one calling himself Duncan Rothwell been to see you?"
I told him what had happened--so far as I understood it. His amazement
unmistakably was genuine.
"You say that the dead man had nothing on him by means of which he
could be recognised. Then, in that case, we can do nothing to assist
in his identification; we ourselves have never seen Mr. Duncan
Rothwell in our lives. All our communications with him have been by
letter."
He acknowledged one thing: that the person for whom they had been
acting was Mr. Duncan Rothwell. But, beyond that one fact, I learned
nothing at all. He protested that Mr. Duncan Rothwell had instructed
them, by letter, to advertise for a James Southam, of Dulborough, and
that that was all they knew of the matter. He even suggested that,
since I was James Southam, I, if I chose, could fill up the blanks.
When I returned to the hotel, little wiser than I left it, as soon as
I set foot inside the door the inspector of police, clapping his hand
upon my shoulder, drew me aside. I did not like the fashion in which
he addressed me at all.
"See here, Mr. Southam. I do not wish to make myself disagreeable, but
I need scarcely point out to you that there are circumstances in this
case which are, to say the least of it, peculiar. I may as well tell
you that your movements will be under the surveillance of the police;
and, should you make any attempt to elude us we may consider it our
duty to place you in safe custody."
"That's all right," I replied. "Lock me up and hang me, do! It only
needs some little trifle of that kind to make the situation altogether
what it should be. The man is a perfect stranger to me, and I know no
more how he came to his death than the man in the moon; which things
are, possibly, a sufficient reason why the police should make of me
one of their proverbial examples."
It struck me that the inspector did not altogether know what to make
of me; Although he did not arrest me, to all intents and purposes he
might almost as well have done. Until the inquest took place the hotel
was practically in charge, with everybody in it. A policeman slept on
the premises; other policemen were continually about the premises,
asking questions and making themselves objectionable both by day and
night. I myself began to feel that I had a haunted, hangdog sort of
air. As for Mrs. Barnes, if she had not a great crime upon her
conscience, it was not because she did not look it. She seemed to be
growing hourly thinner. I knew very well that she was full of a great
anxiety to say a word or two to me in private, but dared not for fear
of prying eyes and ears. She solved the difficulty in her own way by
pinning a note to my pillow, so that I found it on going to bed on the
night before the inquest.
It had neither beginning nor end, and ran something like this; every
word was underlined--
"Say nothing to-morrow about my husband, for God's sake! I am quite
sure that he had nothing to do with this deed of horror--you know that
he had not--and I know! No good purpose will be served by dragging him
into it, and so bringing on me greater ruin than has come already!"
As I read this scarcely judicious appeal I told myself that Mrs.
Barnes was certainly wrong in saying that I knew that her mysterious
husband had had nothing to do with the crime which had been wrought.
As a matter of fact, I knew nothing.
The more I reflected, however, the less I liked the look of the
circumstances, which seemed to suggest a guilty knowledge on the part
of my whilom friend, the waiter. It appeared at least possible that he
was the James Southam who had been actually advertised for, and that
he was very well aware that Duncan Rothwell had something to say to
him which was, very distinctly, not to his advantage. Looking at the
violence which, without hesitation, he had used towards me, was it not
conceivable that he might have, and indeed had, used still greater
violence towards Mr. Rothwell?
The inquest was not over in a day, though the only light it threw upon
the crime went to prove the identity of the murdered man. A singular
state of things the evidence upon this point revealed--by no means
tending to elucidate the mystery. The dead man actually turned out to
be Jonas Hartopp--the head, and, in fact, the sole remaining partner,
in the well-known firm of manufacturing jewellers--Hartopp and
Company. The strange part of the business was that he seemed to have
been Duncan Rothwell as well--that is, he had assumed that name for
reasons which were very far from being plain.
Hartopp and Company were a Birmingham firm--a wealthy one. Jonas
Hartopp himself had had the reputation of being as rich as a
reasonable man would care to be. Duncan Rothwell had written to
Messrs. Cleaver and Caxton from Liverpool, where he had taken rooms,
as it would seem, for the special purpose of communicating with them.
He had never occupied the rooms, but had given the most peremptory
instructions that all letters and telegrams should at once be
forwarded to an address at Aston. The address at Aston turned out to
be a tobacconist's shop. The tobacconist at once recognised the dead
man as being the person he had known as Duncan Rothwell. Why the
wealthy Birmingham jeweller, Jonas Hartopp, had chosen to masquerade
as Duncan Rothwell, or what was the something to his advantage which
he proposed to communicate to James Southam, there was not a shred or
tittle of evidence to show; nor was there a thread of light thrown
upon the shadows which enveloped the mystery of his sudden death.
As it chanced, no question was asked me while I was in the witness-box
which gave me an opportunity of bringing in the incident of Mrs.
Barnes's husband. I had a sufficiently bad time of it without being
actuated by a burning desire to involve myself in further
complications. Never in my life had I been so badgered. They would not
accept my plain statement that I had not the faintest notion why James
Southam had been advertised for, or who had advertised for him, or
what was the something which he was to learn to his advantage. The
coroner and the police, and, for the matter of that, the public too,
appeared to be under the impression that, since I owned that my name
was James Southam, therefore I held the key of the mystery in the
hollow of my hand; or, at any rate, that I ought to. They had raked up
the circumstances of my life from my earliest days; they had made all
sorts of inquiries about me in all sorts of directions, yet they could
find nothing which could fairly be said to tell against me; and that
for the sufficient, and, from my point of view, satisfactory reason,
that there was nothing to find.
Notwithstanding which, when the inquiry closed, I was conscious that
more than one person in court, and a good many out of it, cherished
the impression that I had had a hand indirectly, if not directly, in
the murdered man's despatch, the verdict of the coroner's jury being
that Jonas Hartopp, otherwise known as Duncan Rothwell, had been
murdered by some person or persons unknown.
CHAPTER V
THE NEW GUEST
Oddly enough it was not until I was smarting under the feelings
occasioned by the reflection that I had come out of the inquiry with a
smirch upon my character that it occurred to me what a fool I had
been, when I was in the witness-box, in not going even out of my way
to transfer suspicion from myself to the scamp whom Mrs. Barnes had
assured me was her husband. I arrived, then and there, at a
resolution. I would play, on lines of my own, that favourite part in
fiction--the role of the amateur detective. I would trace to their
sources the various threads which had become complicated in such a
tangled web of crime. I would unravel them, one by one. Single-handed,
if necessary, I would make the whole thing plain.
In theory, an excellent resolution; situated as I was, not an easy one
to put into practice. Before the end of the coroner's inquest Messrs.
Cleaver and Caxton informed me that their guarantee to provide for the
expenses of my sojourn at Mrs. Barnes's establishment thenceforward
was withdrawn. Of the four banknotes which had come to me in Duncan
Rothwell's letter about fifteen pounds remained. If that sum might be
credited to my account, on the debit side of the column was the injury
which my connection with the affair had, at least temporarily, done my
character. If before I had found it difficult to obtain remunerative
employment, I should find it now still harder.
On the morning after the close of the inquiry I was meditating taking
an immediate departure from the house in which I had met with
experiences which had been to anything but my advantage, when Mrs.
Barnes came into the room. Her worries had worn her almost to a
shadow. I felt that, if she continued to diminish at the same rate
long, she soon, literally, would entirely waste away. Her nervous
tricks seemed to have become accentuated. She stood rubbing her hands
together, apparently for the moment at a loss for something to say.
"I hope, sir, that you are not going?"
"Then you hope wrong, Mrs. Barnes. I certainly am going, and that at
once."
"You mustn't sir--you really mustn't."
"You are wrong again, Mrs. Barnes, for I really must, if on one
account only--that I am not in a position to pay your terms."
She gave a sudden movement forward, coming to lean with both her hands
upon the table. Her voice dropped to that odd, palpitating whisper of
which she seemed to be so fond.
"You needn't let that trouble you. You can live board and lodging
free, and you'll be welcome."
I observed her closely. In her face there was something which was
positively uncanny. If ever a person had a haunted look it was Mrs.
Barnes.
"Why do you make to me such a proposition? Do you consider that I am
the sort of person who would be willing to snatch at anybody's
charity, or are you in the habit of giving strangers board and lodging
free?"
"Indeed, no; but it's different with you. If you leave me now I shall
not dare to stay in the house, and that's the truth. I feel as if you
were guarding me; as if hungry eyes were on the house, seeking for a
chance to work me evil, but that the hidden watchers dare not come in
to do that to me which they desire while my roof still shelters you.
Sir, do you think that 'he' did it?"
"Do I think that who did what?"
"Do you think that my husband killed that man?"
"To be frank with you, I think it extremely possible that he knows as
much of the business as may altogether be good for him--more, for
instance, than you or I. I have been reproaching myself for having
done as you requested, and not having at least alluded to the
gentleman in question when giving my evidence before the coroner."
My words set her trembling.
"You did quite right. You would have been sorry for it afterwards. I
cannot tell you why or how, but I am certain that my husband had no
more to do with that deed of blood than you or I."
The woman's intense earnestness made me stare.
"I can only say, Mrs. Barnes, that I regret that I am unable to share
your certainty."
"That is one reason why I ask you--why I implore you to stay. There is
a cloud hanging over you and over me--it is the same cloud! If you
stay I feel that it may be lifted; but, if you leave, it may rest on
us for ever."
What she said was nonsense pure and simple. Still, I suffered myself
to be persuaded. I agreed to stay on--at any rate, for a time. The
satisfaction with which she received my decision was so pronounced
that one might have thought that I had done her the greatest service
in the world.
I went out in the afternoon. When I came back in the evening, not a
little to my surprise, my food was brought me by a man. I stared at
him askance. Hitherto the whole service of the house, in which I had
been the only guest, had been done by the maid. Now I found myself
confronted by a quite irreproachable-looking waiter, attired in the
orthodox costume of his kind. His presence was so unexpected that I
found it impossible to conceal my astonishment.
"Who the deuce are you?" I blurted out.
The fellow began to smirk in reply. "New waiter, sir--only came this
afternoon, sir!"
"I had no notion that Mrs. Barnes contemplated making such an addition
to her establishment."
"No, sir; perhaps not, sir. Business is very slack just now, but the
season is coming on, and the house will very soon be full."
This was emphatically a lie. So far from the season just coming on, in
an hotel-keeper's sense, it was rapidly drawing to an end; and so far
as Mrs. Barnes was personally concerned, apparently a bitter one, too.
What she wanted, circumstanced as she was, with such a gorgeous
individual as this about the place, or what she could find for him to
do, surpassed my comprehension.
The fellow bustled about the room, pretending to busy himself, in
accordance with a trick of his trade, with nothing at all.
"Been here long, sir?"
"You know very well how long I have been here."
"Beg pardon, sir, how's that?"
"You have read it in the papers. Don't feign ignorance with me, my
man."
The fellow turned away. He was industriously polishing an already
spotless glass.
"You allude to the recent unfortunate occurrence, sir? I believe that
I did see something about it."
"You believe! Is that all? You are perfectly aware that you are as
well up in what you call the recent occurrence as I am. You know all
about me; how I came into the house, when I came, my name, and
everything."
I do not know why I said this, but I did say it, and I felt that it
was true. The man seemed taken aback.
"Mrs. Barnes did mention your name," he murmured.
"You knew it without her mentioning it. You can leave the room. When I
want you I will ring."
I was glad to be rid of him. His presence seemed to chafe me. I knew
not why. He was not ill-looking. His bearing was wholly respectful;
and yet some instinct had seemed to warn me that while I was in his
near neighbourhood it would be just as well that I should be upon my
guard.
When I had eaten I sallied forth in quest of Mrs. Barnes. Her nervous
system had not improved since the morning; even the sight of me seemed
to fill her with terror. Her eyes looked at everything except at me. I
wondered if some disaster had been added to the sum of her already
over-numerous troubles.
"You have a new waiter," I began.
"Yes." She spoke in a stammering whisper. Her features were agitated
with the former reminiscence of St. Vitus's Dance. "Yes; a new
waiter."
"I hope very sincerely, for your sake, Mrs. Barnes, that he may ere
long have other guests to wait upon besides myself."
"Yes." The same irresolute muttering. "Yes; I hope he may."
"I had no idea that you thought of making an engagement of the kind
just now."
"No--I don't think--I told you."
What was the matter with the woman? Why did she persist in speaking in
that tone of voice, as if she was fearful of being overheard! And why
did she apparently not dare to allow her eyes to rest, even for a
moment, on my face? She had been so effusive in the morning. Now, on a
sudden, she had returned to the condition of almost doddering terror
which had marked her bearing during the time we had a policeman
quartered in the house.
"Where did you get the man? What is his name? And what do you know of
him?"
As I put my questions I thought for a moment that she was going to
favour me with one of her frenzied bursts of confidence. But while I
waited for her to speak, all at once her frame became rigid. I seemed
to see the unspoken words lying on her lips. Turning to discover the
cause of the obvious change in her manner, I found that the new waiter
had opened the door and, unannounced, had entered the room. At sight
of him her agitation again assumed the upper hand.
"I--I must ask you to excuse me, sir. I have something which I must
do."
I did excuse her; but when I had left her I decided in my own mind
that my instinct had been right, and that there was more in the new
waiter than met the eye. It seemed scarcely likely that even a
landlady of such an eccentric type as Mrs. Barnes would increase her
staff when the only guest which her house contained was such an
emphatically unprofitable one as I bade fair to be.
However, in one respect the position of affairs was destined to be
speedily changed. The house received not only another guest, but also
one who bade fair to be as profitable a one as a landlady's heart
could wish. It was on the day immediately following that Mrs.
Lascelles-Trevor arrived. I had been out all the morning and
afternoon, renewing the weary search for employment which might
provide me with the means for obtaining my daily bread. The first
intimation I had of her arrival was when, having dined, I was thinking
of a quiet pipe, and of an early retirement to bed.
CHAPTER VI
THE WOMAN WITH ONE HAND
"Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor's compliments, sir, and would you mind stepping
upstairs?"
I had a lighted match in my hand, and was in the very act of applying
it to the bowl of my pipe when the latest importation in waiters
brought me the message.
"Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor?" I let the match go out. "And pray who may
Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor be?"
"The lady who arrived to-day, sir, and who has taken a private
sitting-room--No. 8."
"Indeed! And what does Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor want with me?"
"I don't know, sir; she asked me to give you her compliments, and
would you be so kind as to step upstairs."
I stepped upstairs, wondering. I was received by a tall and somewhat
ponderous woman, who was dressed in a dark-blue silk costume, almost
as if she were going to a ball. She half rose from the couch as I came
in, inclining her head in my direction with what struck me as a
slightly patronising smile. She spoke in a loud, hearty tone of voice,
which was marked by what struck me as being a Yorkshire twang.
"It is so good of you to come to see me, Mr. Southam. I was really
more than half afraid to ask you. As it is, I beg ten thousand
pardons, but I do so want you to write me a letter."
"To write you a letter? I am afraid I am a little slow of
comprehension."
"I have lost my hand." She stretched out her right arm. Both arms were
bare to the shoulder. I could not but notice how beautifully they were
moulded, their massive contours, their snowy whiteness. She wore
gloves which reached nearly to her elbows. So far as I could judge
there appeared to be a hand inside of both. She seemed to read my
thoughts, still continuing to hold her right arm out in front of her.
"You think my hand is gloved? I always wear it so. But the glove
conceals a dummy. Come and feel it." I bowed. I was content to take
her at her word; I had no wish to put her to the actual test. "I have
never been able to gain complete control over my left hand--to use it
as if it were my right. I suppose it is because I am not clever
enough. I can scribble with it, but only scribble. When I desire to
have a letter properly written I am dependent upon outsiders' help.
Will you write one for me now?"
It was an odd request for a new-comer at an hotel to address to a
perfect stranger, but I complied. The letter she dictated, and which I
wrote at her dictation, seemed to me the merest triviality--a scribble
would have served the purpose just as well. She chattered all the time
that I was writing, and, when I had finished, she went on chattering
still. All at once she broke into a theme to which I ought to have
become accustomed, but had not.
"Do you know, Mr. Southam, that I have been reading about this
dreadful murder case? How the papers have all been full of it! And I
don't mind telling you, as a matter of fact, that in a sort of a way
it was that which has brought me to this hotel."
If that were so, I retorted, then her tastes were individual; she
perceived attractions where the average man saw none. She laughed.
"I don't know that it was exactly that, but the truth is, Mr. Southam,
I was interested in you." The way in which she emphasised the pronoun
a little startled me. "I made up my mind that I would ferret you out
directly I got to the hotel, and that then, if I liked the look of
you, would make you an offer. You see how frank I am."
She certainly was frank to a fault, in one sense. And yet I wondered.
As I replied to her my tone was grim.
"It is very good of you. And now that, as I take it for granted that
you do like the look of me--as you can scarcely fail to do--may I
inquire what is the nature of the offer you propose to make?"
She laughed again. Possibly my perceptions were unusually keen,
but, all the time, it occurred to me that there was about her a
something--an atmosphere, if you will--which was not exactly
suggestive of laughter. Unless I was mistaken, her faculties were as
much on the alert as mine were. She was engaged in summing me up when
she feigned to be least observant.
"You must understand, Mr. Southam, that I know all about you which the
papers had to tell, and that was not a little! So we are not exactly
strangers. At least, that is, you are not wholly a stranger to me.
Besides which, I myself once knew a person whose name was Southam."
I started. The woman's eyes were fixed on me, although she pretended
to be trifling with her dress.
"You knew a person whose name was Southam. Indeed! Who was it, a man
or a woman?"
She ignored my question.
"Have you any relatives of your own name?
"Not that I am aware of, though there seems to be more than one
Southam about in the world. What Southam was it you knew?"
Her tone was ostentatiously indifferent. "Oh, it doesn't matter. It
was a long time ago, and, as you say, I suppose there are heaps of
Southams about in the world. I only wanted to explain to you that you
were not so absolutely unknown to me as the fact that this is our
first actual meeting might lead you to imagine. Will you allow me to
ask if you are still seeking employment? I thought, from what I read
in the papers, that it was just possible you might be."
"You have supposed correctly. I am."
"Would you like to fill the post of secretary?"
"Of secretary?" I paused for a moment to consider--not the suggestion
of such a post, but the source from whence the suggestion came. "To
whom?"
"To me."
"It is very kind of you, but do you clearly understand, madam, that
you are speaking to a person whose character is under a cloud?"
"Because you were suspected of having murdered that man?"
Her question was brutal in its candour.
"Precisely. Because I was suspected, and, for all I know, still am."
"The people who suspected you were fools. I will back my capacity as a
judge of character, even at sight, against their suspicions. You are
not of the stuff of which murderers are made."
Her tone was short and sharp--I had almost written sarcastic--as if
she thought it a shame to a man not to be made of the stuff of which
murderers are. She went on, speaking quickly, even brusquely.
"I will trust you, if you, on your part, will trust me. As I have told
you, and as I will prove to you, if--as I almost believe--you doubt
me, I have lost my hand. See!" Hastily, before I could stop her, she
began to unbutton her right glove. She only unloosed a button or two,
when the whole thing, glove, hand and all, came clean away, and she
held out towards me her handless arm. I stared, at a loss for words,
not a little shocked--the disfigurement was so dreadful, and seemed to
have been so recent. Her voice grew bitter. "I lost that hand under
circumstances which impressed its loss upon my memory. As it were, I
seem to be losing it anew, every hour of every day. It has left me
impotent. Will you relieve my impotence? Will you become my secretary?
There will not be much for you to do, but there will be something; the
salary which I shall pay you will not be a large one, but it will,
perhaps, suffice till something better offers; I will give you a
hundred pounds a year, and, as they say in the advertisements, all
found. Do not give me your answer at once. It may be that I shall stay
in the hotel some time, and, at any rate, while I am here, possibly
you will not refuse to act as my amanuensis. You can see with your own
eyes how much I am in want of one."
Again she drew my attention to her mangled arm. As she suggested, I
neither accepted nor declined her offer there and then; it was one
which needed consideration from more points than one. For instance,
while she did know something of me--if what she had read in the
newspaper reports could be called knowledge--I knew literally nothing
of her; for all I could tell, she might be an adventuress lately freed
from the purlieus of a gaol. I did consent to do any secretarial work
she might require during her stay in the hotel. By the time she left
it I might be able to see my way more clearly than I did just then.
I saw a good deal of Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor during the few days which
followed, and the more I saw of her the less I could make her out.
There was a good deal of work for me to do, such as it was. I wondered
if she had brought it with her in order to furnish her with an excuse
to give me occupation. There were papers for me to copy--papers which
seemed to be of the very slightest importance. While I was supposed to
be engaged in copying them, she interrupted me without remorse, and
talked and talked and talked. During those conversations she learned a
great deal of my history, while I ascertained nothing at all of hers.
I found that she was a woman of quick and imperious temper: to fence
with one of her interminable questions annoyed her; to have declined
point-blank to answer one would have involved an immediate breach. If
I took service with her, it would be with my eyes open; I should have
to be prepared for squalls. Though she gave me employment as if she
were bestowing charity, she would expect and require perfect obedience
from me in return.
I do not think that, as a rule, I am quick in taking dislike at a
person, but there did, in spite of myself, grow up in my mind a sense
of antipathy towards Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor. I felt as if she were
watching me; pumping me, turning me inside out, as if I were some old
glove; playing with me with that cruel sort of enjoyment with which a
cat plays with a mouse, and I did not find the feeling an agreeable
one.
To add to my comfort, I had an uneasy consciousness that the new
waiter had an attentive eye upon my movements in a non-waiterial
sense. It was an eye for which I did not thank him; I almost suspected
that he was playing the part of a sleepless spy. I half believed that,
not infrequently, he was an unseen auditor of my interviews with Mrs.
Lascelles-Trevor--I should like to have caught him in the act! One
night I could not sleep, I found that I had left my pipe downstairs. I
started off to get it; I had scarcely got outside the bedroom door
when I all but stumbled over the new waiter. Before I had discovered
who it was, I had pinned him to the floor. He was profuse in his
apologies, but I do not think that he could altogether have liked the
way in which I handled him.
CHAPTER VII
THE SECOND ENCOUNTER
I began, as the days went by, to be more and more a prey to unhealthy,
and apparently unreasonable doubts and fears--fears which, in truth,
were so intangible that they were without form and void, but which
were very real for all that. I began to feel as if a net were being
drawn tighter and tighter round me, and as if every step I took was
beset by hidden dangers. Such a mental condition was as I have said,
an unhealthy one. I realised that well enough, and I had been
wandering one evening to and fro on the Embankment, striving to free
myself, if only for a time, from the imaginary mists and shadows which
seemed to compass me about, when as I was turning into the street in
which stood Mrs. Barnes's hotel, I saw a man crouching in the darkness
of the wall. What was the man's purpose I had no doubt: he was seeking
for concealment. He had seen me before I saw him, and was endeavouring
to escape my scrutiny.
I took him to be the new waiter. I supposed that I had caught him in
the act of spying on me at last. I turned swiftly on him, and before
he could retreat I had him by the shoulders.
"Before I let you go, my friend, you will be so good as to tell me,
now and here, what is the cause of the extreme interest which you
evidently take in my proceedings."
That was what I said to him; but already, before I had said my say
right out, I perceived that I was wrong: that the man I had hold of
was not the man I thought he was. This man was shorter and of slighter
build, and he showed more signs of fight than, within my experience,
the other had evinced. He wriggled in my grasp like an eel, but,
holding tightly on to him, I dragged him a little into the light.
When I succeeded in getting a glimpse at him there came from between
my lips a series of interjections:--
"You!--James Southam!--Mr. Barnes! Good God!"
I had hardly spoken when he knocked me down. I was so taken by
surprise that I was unable to offer the least resistance; he felled me
again, as he had felled me before, as if I had been a ninepin. By the
time I had realised what had happened I was lying on my back on the
pavement. His hand was on my throat, and his knee was on my chest. He
was peering closely into my face--so closely that I could feel his
breath upon my cheeks.
"It's you again, is it? I thought it was. Don't you make a noise, or
I'll choke the life right out of you. You tell me, straight out, what
it is you want with me--do you hear?"
As if to drive his question well home, he gave my head a sharp tap
against the pavement. His strength must have been prodigious. I was
conscious that, with him above me thus and with that iron grasp upon
my throat, I was wholly at his mercy. The hour was late. Although
almost within a stone's throw of the Strand, the place was solitary;
not a creature might pass just where we were the whole night through.
"Take your hand from my windpipe--I cannot speak--you are choking me,"
I gasped.
"Give me your word you will make no noise if I do. See here!"
He was clutching a knife--as ugly a looking knife as ever I saw. He
brandished it before my eyes.
"I give my word," I managed to utter.
He relaxed his hold. It was a comfort to be again able to freely
inflate my lungs, though the continued presence of his knee on my
chest was none too pleasant. With the point of his knife he actually
pricked my nose.
"Don't you try to move, or I will cut your throat as if you were a
pig. Lie still and answer my questions--and straight, mind, or you'll
be sorry. What is it you want with me?"
"I want nothing from you--I have never wanted anything. You have been
under an entire misapprehension throughout."
Once more, with gruesome sportiveness, he tickled my nose with his
knife.
"Stow that, my lad! It's no good trying to catch this bird with salt.
How did you come to know that my name was James Southam?"
"I never did know it. The simple truth is that that name happened to
be mine."
"What's that?"
"I say that that name happens to be mine--I am James Southam."
Bending down he glared at me with eyes which seemed to glow like
burning coal.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean precisely what I say. If you choose to examine the contents of
my pockets--they are at your mercy--you will find ample proof of the
truth of what I say. Besides, I take it that you have had truth of
this proof from the contents of the papers."
"The contents of the papers--what papers?"
I looked at him to see if his seeming ignorance of what I meant was
real. It appeared to be.
"You and I, Mr. Southam, or Mr. Barnes, or whatever your name is, have
been, and it would seem still are, at cross purposes. I take no more
interest in your affairs than you take in mine--perhaps not so much.
The mention of my name seems to have awoke uncomfortable echoes in
your breast, which fact is of the nature of an odd coincidence."
"You are not a policeman, or a detective, or a private inquiry agent,
or anything of that kind--you swear it?"
"Very willingly. I am simply a poor devil of a clerk out of a
situation. Why you should object to me, or, still more, why you should
fear me, I have not the faintest notion."
He hesitated before he spoke again--then his tone was sullen.
"I don't know if you are lying: I expect you are: but anyhow, I'll
chance it. I fancy that I'm about your match, if it's tricks you're
after. If I let you get up, can I trust you?"
"You can: again I give you my word for it."
He let me rise. When I had done so, and was brushing the dust off my
clothes, I took his measure. Even by the imperfect light I could see
how shabby he was, and how hollow his cheeks were. He seemed to have
shrunk to half his size since that first short interview I had had
with him.
"You will excuse my saying you don't look as if you have been living
in clover."
"I haven't. I am nearly starving. It is that which has brought me
back."
"Why did you ever go? Mrs. Barnes tells me that you are her husband. I
should imagine that you had a pretty comfortable birth of it."
He glowered at me with renewed suspicion. "Oh, she has told you so
much, has she? What has she told you more?"
"Very little. She has been half beside herself trying to think what
has become of you, especially since this affair of Duncan Rothwell."
We had crossed the road and were on the Embankment, walking towards
the City side by side. Although I had made the allusion of set
purpose, I was scarcely prepared for the effect which it had on him.
Plainly, he was a person of ungovernable impulses. He stopped, swung,
round, again the knife was gleaming in his grasp, and his hand was at
my throat. But this time I succeeded in warding him off.
"What is the matter with you, man? Are you stark mad?"
He was breathing in great gasps. "What name--was that--you said?"
"Surely the name must be a familiar one to you by now. It has been to
the front enough in all the papers."
"The paper! What papers?"
"The newspapers, man, of course!"
"How do I know what is in the newspapers? I never look at them. There
is nothing in them which is of interest to me. What name was that you
said? Tell me if you dare!"
He made a threatening gesture with his knife, seeming to be half
frenzied with excitement.
"Duncan Rothwell--the man who was murdered at your wife's front door."
"Duncan Rothwell! Murdered--at my wife's--front door!"
The knife fell from his hand. He gave such a backward lurch that I
half expected to see him fall down after it. In an instant, stooping,
I had the knife in my grasp. I felt strongly that such a weapon was
safer in my possession than in his. He did not seem for the moment to
be conscious of what it was which he had lost and I had gained. He
stood staring in front of him with an air of stupefaction. He repeated
his own words over to himself, stammeringly, as if he were unable to
catch their meaning: "Murdered--at my wife's--front door!"
"Where have you been living not to have heard of it? It has been the
topic of every tongue."
I could see that he was struggling to collect his scattered senses. He
spoke at last as if he were waking from a dream.
"I have heard nothing. I do not understand what you are talking about.
Tell me everything."
I told him all that there was to tell. Evidently the whole of it was
news to him. He listened greedily, gulping down, as it were, every
word I uttered, as if I had been feeding him with physical food as
well as mental. As I noted his demeanour, it seemed incredible that he
could have been the chief actor in the tragedy to the details of which
he listened with such apparently unfeigned amazement. I had been
guilty of an unintentional injustice in doubting him. As I told my
tale we leaned upon the parapet--he never looking at me once, but
straight into the heart of the river.
When I had finished he was silent for some moment. Then he put to me a
question:
"Do you mean to say that nothing has been found out to show who did
it?"
"Absolutely nothing."
Unless I erred, he smiled. Had I not done him an injustice after all?
Could the man be such a consummate actor?
"And yet you almost saw him killed?"
"Had I come into the hall half a moment sooner I might have seen the
murderer in the act of perpetrating his crime."
This time he laughed right out--an evil laugh.
"For goodness' sake, man, don't laugh like that--it makes me shiver."
He was still, with a stillness which, somehow, I did not care to
break. A far-away look began to come into his face. He seemed to
become lost in thought. When, after a long interval, during which I
was sufficiently engaged in watching the different expressions which
seem to chase each other across his face, he broke the silence, it was
as though he muttered to himself, oblivious of his companion and of
the place in which he was: "What a woman she is!"
That was what he said. I caught the words as he uttered them beneath
his breath--uttered them, as it seemed, half in admiration, half in
scorn. And he again was still.
CHAPTER VIII
"MURDERER!"
He would not go home. I spent, I daresay, an hour in seeking to
persuade him. I pointed out the injury he was doing to himself, the
wrong which he was doing his wife. I went further--I more than hinted
at the suspicions which might fall upon him in connection with the
Rothwell murder; plainly asserting that it would be the part of
wisdom, to speak of nothing else, for him to put in an appearance on
the scene, look the business squarely in the face, and see it boldly
through. But he was not to be induced. The most that I could get from
him was a promise that he would come to the front, to use his own
words, "when the time was ripe"--what he meant by them was more than I
could tell. In return, he extracted a promise from me that I would say
nothing of our meeting to his wife until he gave me leave--a promise
which was only given on the strength of his solemn asseveration that
such silence on my part would be best for his wife's sake, and for
mine. He would give me no address. In reply to my fishing inquiries
into the mystery of his personal action he maintained an impenetrable
reserve--he was not to be drawn. One thing he did condescend to do: he
borrowed all the loose cash which I had in my pockets.
Mrs. Barnes had supplied me with a latchkey; I had been accustomed to
let myself in with it when I was late. My surprise was therefore
considerable when, directly I inserted the key in the lock, the door
was opened from within, and there confronting me stood the ubiquitous
new waiter, with the inevitable smile upon his face.
"What are you sitting up for at this hour of the night? You know very
well that I have a key of my own."
He continued to stand in the stiff, poker-like attitude which always
reminded me of a soldier rather than of a waiter. Not a muscle of his
countenance moved.
"I have been accustomed to act as a night porter, sir."
"Then you needn't trouble yourself to act as a night porter to me. Let
me take this opportunity to speak to you a word of a sort. What is the
nature of the interest you take in my proceedings, I do not know. That
you do take a peculiar interest is a little too obvious. While I
remain in this house I intend to come, and to go, and to do exactly as
I please. The next time I have cause to suspect you of spying upon my
movements you will be the recipient of the best licking you ever had
in all your life. You understand? I shall keep my word, so you had
better make a note of it."
The fellow said nothing in return; his lips were closely pursed
together. I might have been speaking to a dummy, except that there
came a gleam into his eyes which scarcely suggested that his heart was
filled with the milk of human kindness.
When I had reached my bedroom, and, having undressed, was opening my
night shirt preparatory to putting it on, there fell from one of the
folds of the garment a scrap of paper.
"What now?" I asked myself, as I watched it go fluttering to the
floor. I picked it up; it only contained four words, and they were in
Mrs. Barnes's writing: "You are in danger."
This, veritably, was an hotel of all the mysteries. Whether the
husband or the wife was the more curious character, was, certainly, an
open question. For days she had avoided me. In spite of my attempts to
induce her to enter into conversation I had scarcely been able to get
a word out of her edgeways. Why had she chosen this eccentric method
of conveying to me such an enigmatic message? I was in danger! Of
what? It struck me forcibly, and not for the first time, that if I
remained much longer an inmate of Barnes's hotel I should be in
distinct danger of one thing--of going mad!
I had still some papers left to copy, out of the last batch which Mrs.
Lascelles-Trevor had given me. I had been accustomed to do my work in
her private sitting-room, it being my habit, as I understood it, in
accordance with her wish, first to have breakfast, and then to go
upstairs and ask her if she was prepared for me to commence my duties.
The next morning I followed the ordinary course of procedure, and was
at her door, if anything, rather before the usual hour. But instead of
vouchsafing me a courteous greeting, as it was her wont to do, she
commenced to rate me soundly, asking me if I thought that her time was
of no account, since I kept her waiting till it suited me to give her
my attention.
I made no attempt to excuse myself, imagining that she was suffering
from an attack of indigestion, or from some other complaint which
female flesh is peculiarly heir to, contenting myself with repeating
my inquiry as to whether she was ready to avail herself of my
proffered services. The fashion of her rejoinder hardly suggested that
the lady who made it was stamped with the stamp which is, poetically,
supposed to mark the caste of Vere de Vere.
"Don't ask me such absurd questions! You don't suppose that I'm the
servant, and you're the master. Sit down, and begin your work at once,
and don't try any of your airs with me!"
I sat down, and began my work at once. It was not for me to argue with
a lady. Beggars may not be choosers, and I could only hope that the
infirmities of a feminine temper might not be too frequently in
evidence as a sort of honorary addition to the charms of my salary.
That the lady meant to be disagreeable I could have no doubt as the
minutes went by; and scarcely had I commenced to write than she began
at me again. She found fault with my work, with what I had done, with
what I had left undone, as it seemed to me, quite causelessly. I bore
her reproaches as meekly as the mildest mortal could have done.
My meekness seemed to inflame rather than to appease her. She said
things which were altogether uncalled for, and which beyond doubt an
office boy would have resented. That I should keep my temper in face
of her continued provocation evidently annoyed her. Suddenly springing
out of her chair, she bounced from the room.
"I trust," I said, apostrophising her when she had gone, "that when
you do return your temperature will be appreciably lower. In any case,
I fancy, Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor, that you and I shall not long stand
towards each other in the position of employee and employer. Even
by a lady one does not care to be called over the coals--and such
coals!--for nothing at all. One had almost better starve than be
treated, in and out of season, as a whipping boy."
The papers which I was engaged in copying comprised all sorts of odds
and ends, more worthy, I should have thought, of the rubbish heap than
of transcription. They were about all sorts of things, and were in no
sort of order, and why they should be deemed worthy of being enshrined
in the beautiful manuscript book with which Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor had
supplied me was beyond my comprehension.
I had finished transcribing one paper. Laying it down, I drew towards
me another. It was a letter, and was in a hand which I had not
previously encountered. The caligraphy, even the paper on which the
letter was written, filled me with a strange sense of familiarity.
Where had I seen that carefully crabbed, characteristic handwriting
before?--every letter as plain as copperplate, yet the whole conveying
the impression of coming from an unlettered man. I had had a previous
acquaintance with it, and that quite recently.
I had it--it came to me in a flash of memory!
The writing was that which had come to me in the communication which
had been signed Duncan Rothwell. This letter and that letter had
emanated from the same scribe. I could have sworn to it. Even the
paper was the same. I remembered taking particular notice of the large
sheet of post, with the unusually coarse grain; here was that sheet's
twin brother!
What was a letter from Duncan Rothwell doing among Mrs.
Lascelles-Trevor's papers?
It was my duty to copy the thing. It was, therefore, necessary that I
should read it. It bore no date and no address. It began:--"My dearest
Amelia." Who was my dearest Amelia? A glance sufficed to show me that
it was a love-letter, and a love-letter of an uncommon kind. Clearly,
there had been some blunder. Such an epistle could not intentionally
have been lumped with that olla podrida of scraps and scrawls. It was
out of place in such a gallery. What was I to do?
The question was answered for me. While I still hesitated, Mrs.
Lascelles-Trevor reappeared. I said nothing, but I daresay that the
expression of my features and the gingerly style in which I held the
letter out in front of me, conveyed a hint that I had lighted on
something out of the way. Probably, too, she recognised the letter
directly she caught sight of it, even from the other side of the
room. Anyhow, she came striding forward--she was a woman who could
stride--and, without any sort of ceremony, leaning across the table,
she snatched it from my hand. For an instant I expected she would
strike me--she was in such a passion. The veins stood out on her brow
like bands; her lips gave convulsive twitches.
Since it seemed that rage had deprived her of the faculty of speech, I
endeavoured to explain the situation by feigning ignorance that there
was a situation to explain.
"Do you wish me to copy this letter in the same way as the others?"
My voice was suave; hers, when it came, was not.
"You beast!" That was the epithet which she was pleased to hurl at me.
"I might have guessed you were a thief!"
"Madam!"
Her language was so atrocious, and her anger, so far as I was
concerned, so unjustifiable, that I knew not what to make of her.
"Where did you steal that letter?"
I stood up. "Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor, you go too far. You appear to be
under the, I assure you, erroneous impression that, in engaging a man
to fill the honourable post of your secretary, you buy him body and
soul to do as you will."
"You smooth-tongued hound! Don't think to play the hypocrite with me,
or you will find yourself in custody on a charge of theft."
I looked her steadily in the face--fury seemed to have distended her
naturally generous proportions.
"I fear, madam, that this morning you are suffering from ill-health.
When you are yourself again, I feel sure you will tender your
apologies."
I moved towards the door. But she would not let me go. She placed
herself in front of me.
"Don't think that you deceive me! Don't think that your attitudinising
can impose on me! If you do, you are in error. I have known you from
the first--yes, before I saw you in the actual flesh. I knew Jonas
Hartopp as well as you, and when he fell I swore that I would gibbet
the wretch who slew him. All this time I have been watching you, the
avenger of blood; I have been tracking you, step by step, playing the
very sleuth-hound: It only needs a very little to enable me to prove
your guilt up to the hilt; and you may be very sure of this, James
Southam, that though you seek to hide yourself in the nethermost
corners of the earth, I will have you brought back to hang!"
Her words were so wild, and the charge with which she sought to brand
me such a monstrous birth of a diseased imagination, that the most
charitable supposition could be that the woman was mentally unhinged.
I treated her with the contempt she merited.
"Possibly, madam, when at your leisure you have credited me with all
the vices, you will suffer me to leave the room."
"That is the tone you take up; you sneer, and sneer, and sneer! I
foresaw it. Do not suppose that this further proof of your deficiency
in all sense of shame takes me by surprise. So black-hearted a villain
was not likely to have a conscience which could be easily pricked. You
may go--still this once! It will not be for long; your wings will soon
be clipped. I shall soon have you in a cage. Be sure of this: I will
show you as little mercy as you showed your helpless victim when he
had walked into the trap which you had set for him. You had best be
careful. And never forget that wherever you go my emissaries keep you
well in sight; whatever you do is known to me within the hour. I have
no intention of letting the cord which holds you run too loose."
When she stopped to take breath, I bowed. "I thank you, madam, for
your permission to leave the room, and do protest that I esteem myself
highly honoured, in that you should take so acute an interest, as you
say you do, in my humble person."
She let me go, though seemingly not a little against her will. Even at
the last moment I should not have been surprised if she had assailed
me with actual physical violence. But she retained sufficient vestiges
of self-control to refrain from doing that. When I opened the door she
caught hold of the handle to prevent my shutting it. As I went out she
followed me on to the landing. I, supposing she desired to go
downstairs, moved aside so as to permit of her passage. She took no
notice of my action, so I went downstairs. As I went, she stood at the
head of the flight, observing me as I descended, and she said, in a
tone of voice which was too audible to be pleasant for me--
"Murderer!"
CHAPTER IX
THROWN IN HER FACE
I must admit that, in spite of my efforts to keep up the outward
semblance of indifference, when I reached the hall I was at a loss
what next to do. A man scarcely ever has a passage of arms with an
angry woman without suffering some loss of dignity, and that no matter
how much in the right he is. I had a mine sprung on me from a wholly
unexpected quarter; I had been accused of being an assassin by the
woman who, for at any rate one sanguine second, I had fondly fancied
was about to play the part of my good fairy; and now, as I was
endeavouring with the finest air of conscious rectitude which I had at
my command, to remove myself from the lash of her vigorous tongue, she
had thrown after me in public that hideous epithet. I was aware that
the maid, with eyes and ears wide open, was peeping at me from the
banisters above, while standing stolidly at the foot of the stairs was
that much too attentive waiter. As he moved to let me pass Mrs.
Lascelles-Trevor--I was always fond of double-barrelled names, being
persuaded that they were invariably marks of birth and breeding--gave
me an assurance that I was still in range.
She addressed the waiter with perfect spontaneity.
"You may let him go, my man, for the present. But his course is nearly
run, and he will be in the hands of the police sooner than he thinks."
I did not feel myself entitled to knock the man down because the woman
insulted me, though my inclination went that way. I was still less
disposed to turn and slang her back again, being convinced that in
such a contest I should not be her equal. My impulse was to seek out
Mrs. Barnes, as the landlady, and therefore responsible for all that
took place in her establishment, and submit my grievances to her. But
a glimpse that I caught of her, beating a precipitate retreat into her
sanctum, directly she saw me glance in her direction, informed me that
such a mode of procedure would be worse than vain. I turned into the
coffee-room. Then, feeling that I must go somewhere to cool my brain,
I quitted it almost immediately, to sally forth into the street.
I had brought my wares to a pretty market! Disaster seemed to be
heaped upon disaster's head. Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor might be mad, but
there seemed to be method in her madness, and if she really was
possessed by the fixed idea that I was an assassin, though I might not
stand in actual peril of my life, I could hardly be in a more awkward
situation. No wonder I had felt towards her an instinctive antagonism,
even when she had appeared to be most friendly. I was not sure that I
had done wrong in not seeking to rebut even the wildest of her wild
words with a greater show of gravity. The levity with which I had
received them might be urged against me if it came to an arrest.
An arrest! At the mere thought of such a climax I involuntarily stood
still. Cold sweat was on my brow.
I remembered what Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor had said about her emissaries
being always on my track. For some time past I had had an uneasy
feeling that my footsteps were being dogged and that I was being
watched. I turned to see if any one was shadowing me now: he would
have a bad time of it if I found him. I noted no one whose obvious
attentions I could resent. But then I was in the Strand; in that busy
thoroughfare the merest tyro could ply his trade of spy without fear
of premature detection.
I turned towards Waterloo Bridge, a sudden thought striking me as I
did so. I would go for advice to Messrs. Cleaver and Caxton: it was
through them, in the first place, I had got into this scrape; it ought
to be their business to get me out of it. I went, though I might have
saved myself the trouble. They expressed their willingness to
undertake my defence, if it came to that, and if funds were
forthcoming. But so far from giving me the sort of advice I
wanted--advice which would enable me to escape the dreadful ordeal of
the prisoner's dock--I could see from their manner, if not from their
words, that they thought it as likely as not that I was guilty of the
crime which, as it seemed, was about to be imputed against me.
I left them, feeling very little reassured, and sick at heart returned
to the hotel. On one point I was finally resolved: under that roof I
would not sleep another night. After what had happened in the morning,
even Mrs. Barnes would not have the hardihood to suggest that I should
continue with her any longer--even as a gratuitous guest.
I went straight upstairs to my bedroom meaning to put the few things
together which were mine, and then, and only then, I would have an
interview and an explanation with Mrs. Barnes. This was my programme,
but, like so many other programmes I had arranged, it was not destined
to be carried out.
Directly I reached the bedroom door I became conscious that some one
was inside. Supposing it was the maid, who was performing her
necessary routine duties, I unceremoniously entered. The person within
was not, however, the attendant abigail--it was a man. He lay on his
stomach on the floor, with half his length beneath the bed. It was the
new waiter. There could be no mistake about the nature of his
occupation--I had caught him in the act. So engrossed was he with his
researches, that, before he had realised my presence, I had my knee on
the small of his back and a stick in my hand.
"As you wouldn't take my friendly warning, take that!"
I brought the stick down smartly on the nether portion of his frame.
He had woke to the consciousness of what was happening at last. With
unlooked-for agility, twisting himself partially free, he scrambled
from beneath the bed, I continuing, as he struggled, to get in my
blows wherever I could.
"Stop this," he gasped, "or you'll regret it!"
"I fancy," I retorted, "that the regret will be yours."
He showed more fight than I had expected. It occurred to me that
perhaps, after all, the whipping might not be confined to one side
only. But my blood was up--I was not likely to allow such trifles to
affect me. All at once, just as I was in the very act of bringing down
on him the best blow of any, he caught my wrist and gave it a sharp
wrench which numbed the muscles of my arm as if they had been attacked
by temporary paralysis.
"You fool!" he said. "You don't know what it is you are doing. I am an
officer of police, and I arrest you on a charge of murder."
He had taken my breath away with a vengeance. I gazed at him askance.
"It is false. You are one of that woman's spies."
"I am nothing or the kind, as a shrewd man like you ought to be aware.
I have had this case in hand from the first. I came here to play the
part of a waiter with the special intention of keeping an eye on
you--and I have kept an eye upon you, I fancy, to some purpose."
"It's all a lie!"
"Don't talk nonsense. The game is up, my lad, and you know it. The
question is, are you going to come quietly, or am I to use the
bracelets--I can get plenty of assistance, I assure you, if I choose
to call."
"If you can prove to me the truth of what you say, and can show me
that you really are an officer of police, I can have no objection to
your doing what you conceive to be your duty, though, I declare to
you, as there is a God above us, that in arresting me you are making a
grievous mistake."
The fellow eyed me with what struck me as being a grin of genuine
admiration.
"You're a neat hand--I never saw a chap carry a thing off neater,
though it's my duty to warn you that anything which you may say will
be used against you. But you've made a slight mistake, my lad--perhaps
you didn't think I found it."
He picked up something from the coverlet. It was a long, thin blade,
of a fashion which I had never seen before. It had a point of
exquisite fineness. Here and there the gleaming steel was obscured by
what seemed stains of rust.
"Perhaps it is owing to my stupidity that I am unable to grasp your
meaning. This is not mine, nor have I seen it before."
"Haven't you? That remains to be seen. Unless I am out of my
calculations, I shall not be surprised to learn that that knife killed
Jonas Hartopp. Oddly enough, I found it just as you were coming into
the room--inside the wainscotting, in a little slit in the wall which
was not half badly concealed, and which was hidden by your bed. I
rather reckon that that small bit of evidence will just round my case
up nicely."
"If it is true that you found it where you say you did, I can only
assert that I do not know who put it there. I certainly did not."
"No? That is a point which must be left open for further
consideration. Now I am afraid that I shall have to trouble you to
walk downstairs. You perfectly understand, Mr. Southam, that you are
my prisoner."
The bedroom door, in the hurry of my entrance, had been left wide
open. Turning, I perceived that Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor was staring in
at us.
"Your prisoner!" She echoed the fellow's words. "Mr. Southam is your
prisoner? Who, then, are you?" She put her hand to her breast as if to
control her agitation.
"I am a detective."
"And you have arrested Mr. Southam--for what?"
"For the murder of Jonas Hartopp."
She clasped her hands together in a kind of ecstasy. "I am so glad! so
glad! I congratulate you, sir, on having brought the crime home to the
real criminal at last." She addressed me with an air of triumph which
was wholly unconcealed. "Did I not tell you that your course was
nearly run? It was nearer its close even than I thought."
"I am obliged to you for your prognostication, madam, but I may assure
you that though I am not the first person who has been wrongfully
accused of a crime of which he was completely innocent, I do venture
to indulge in a hope that this is the first occasion on which a woman
has permitted herself to gloat over the misfortunes of a man who,
without having wronged a living creature, is himself friendless,
helpless, and injured."
So far from my words succeeding in reaching the sympathetic side of
her--if she had one--she glared at me, if it were possible, more
malignantly than before.
"You hypocrite!" she hissed.
My captor placed his hand upon my shoulder. "Come," he said, in a tone
which was unmistakably official. "It is no use staying here to bandy
words. Downstairs, Mr. Southam, if you please, and mind, no tricks
upon the way."
I told him that he need not apprehend anything in the nature of what
he called tricks from me. We went downstairs, Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor
close at our heels.
"Step into the coffee-room, Mr. Southam, if you please. I am going to
send for a cab. Mrs. Barnes!" That lady appeared. "I have effected
this man's capture, as I told you that I probably should do."
So she had known all along who he was, and in concealing the fact, in
a sense, had betrayed me. And this was the meaning of her futile,
eleventh-hour attempt at warning of the night before.
"Let me have a cab at once. And allow no one to enter this man's
bedroom until I have had an opportunity of examining all that it
contains. I shall hold you responsible."
I saw that Mrs. Barnes's head was nodding like a Chinese mandarin's,
and that it was set in motion evidently by the agitated condition of
her nerves. The detective perceived that it would be as well for him
to repeat his instructions if he wished them to be acted on.
"Now then, Mrs. Barnes, pull yourself together! Let me have that cab."
As Mrs. Barnes moved aside, with the possible intention of taking
steps to execute the officer's commands, I observed that some one was
standing at her back. It was her husband. He stood just inside the
hall door as if he had just come in, and was wondering what was taking
place. He was as shabbily and as poorly dressed as he very well could
have been. But there was something in his face and in his bearing
which, for some reason which I will not stay to fathom, brought good
hope into my heart.
"It's you? Thank God!" I cried. "They have arrested me for murder! I
hope you have come to help me!"
At the sound of my voice they turned to see to whom it was I was
speaking. When Mrs. Barnes saw her husband, without any sort of notice
she broke into a fit of hysterics, laughing and screaming and kicking
all at once so that the maid had to hold her tightly round the waist
to prevent her making an untimely descent to the ground.
But there was one person on whom his sudden appearance seemed to have
an even greater effect than it had on Mrs. Barnes, and that was Mrs.
Lascelles-Trevor. When she realised who it was who had come so
unexpectedly on the scene, she began to stare at him as if he
exercised over her the fabulous fascination of the snake. She shrank
from before his glance, crouching closer and closer to the wall. She
seemed to actually diminish in size. "You!--you!" she gasped.
"No!--no!--not you!"
She put up her hands as if to ward him off her. As he made a forward
movement, one could see that she shivered, as if in mortal terror.
"And you!" he said, with an intensity of meaning in his voice of which
I had not thought it capable. "And you!" He turned to me, pointing an
accusatory finger at the woman in whose bearing so strange a
metamorphosis had taken place. "If you had told me last night that she
was here, I would have solved the mystery for you there and then. Her
presence here makes the thing as clear as daylight. It was she who
killed Duncan Rothwell. Acknowledge it, you woman with the blood-red
hand!"
He addressed her with a gesture of terrible denunciation. His stature
seemed to have magnified, even as the woman seemed to have decreased.
His face and eyes were blazing. I understood then how it came about
that he had mesmerised poor, weak-minded, nerveless Mrs. Barnes.
"No!" wailed Mrs. Lascelles-Trevor. "No! I never touched him!"
"You dare to deny it!" In the man's voice there seemed to be a
wonderful resonance, in his bearing a singular air of command. He took
from his pocket a box, and from wrappings in the box the ghastly
relics which still haunted Mrs. Barnes in dreams. "Here are the four
fingers and the thumb, and the palm of your right hand, woman, with
which you would have made an end of me. Clearly, therefore, it was
with your left hand that you murdered Duncan Rothwell. Deny it if you
dare!"
As he spoke he threw at her the dreadful fragments. They struck her
full in the face.
"I did it! I own it! Don't touch me--not that!" she screamed.
She fell to the ground--as with amazement and, so far as I was
concerned, with horror, we stared at her--in what proved to be an
epileptic fit.
CHAPTER X
THE JEWEL KING
The story of Duncan Rothwell's murder, when it came to be unfolded in
a court of law, proved to be not the least strange of the many strange
tales which have been unfolded there. Its turnings and twistings and
involutions were many, but briefly summed up it came to this:
The man who had married the landlady of that hotel in the turning off
the Strand, and who, in marrying her, had brought such havoc on her
head, turned out to be a man with many names. What his real name was,
if he ever had one, was never clearly shown. But there had been a time
during which the name by which he had been best known to a certain
section of society had been that of the "Jewel King." He had been the
perpetrator of most of the remarkable jewel robberies which have so
much disturbed society during recent years--a scamp, in short, on a
truly notorious scale. Jonas Hartopp had played receiver to his thief.
These two had been really remarkable men--men of parts which,
fortunately for the world at large, are not often found joined in two
individuals.
For years these two had been close friends--colleagues--with souls but
for a single thought, which thing was plunder, until a woman came
between. This was the woman who has figured in these pages as Mrs.
Lascelles-Trevor, but whose real patronymic was shown to be rather
more plebeian--Amelia Martin. The man who, for the sake of
convenience, I will continue to call Mr. Barnes, was in his way a
genius, and a little mad. He lived for a long time with Amelia Martin
as her husband, without ever having married her. It is probable that
during the whole of this period the woman was in a state of daily and
hourly terror. He had a pleasant habit of playing tricks with women,
particularly mesmeric tricks, of a sort which would hardly have
endeared any husband to any wife. It was seriously alleged, for
instance, that on a Monday he would throw her into a mesmeric sleep,
and leave her quite alone in the house, and in a state of trance,
until he returned on the Saturday to restore her, at his leisure--very
much at his leisure--to a condition of consciousness. Thus she was
continually losing large slices out of her life, under circumstances
which no one could describe as wholly satisfactory.
By degrees she transferred her affections to Jonas Hartopp, and with
them she decided to transfer herself as well. Mr. Barnes had just made
a great coup. The world will remember the disappearance of the
Countess of Crawley's wedding presents. Mr. Barnes walked away from
Crawley House with those priceless gems packed comfortably away in his
pockets. Amelia Martin persuaded Jonas Hartopp to rob his friend, if,
in a little transaction of that peculiar kind, one may speak of
robbery. She offered Mr. Hartopp the Countess's gems for nothing if he
would take her with them. In a weak moment Mr. Hartopp yielded to
temptation. Unfortunately Mr. Barnes detected her in the very act of
flight. She struck a blow for freedom--with a knife. The injury which
she inflicted was, however, a superficial one. Before she could strike
again he had her in a mesmeric sleep. While she was in that state he
cut off at the wrist her right hand, the one with which she had tried
to stab him. Restoring her, he showed her what he had done. In her
agony she vowed that she would turn Queen's evidence and betray him to
the tender mercies of the police, let the consequences to herself be
what they might. In short, she made herself so extremely disagreeable
that, all things considered, Mr. Barnes thought it the better part of
wisdom to decamp.
It was while he was in full flight that he lighted on that hotel in
the street off the Strand, on the landlady of which he so generously
and rapidly bestowed the name of Barnes. He perfectly realised that
his friend and his mistress were leagued together against him, and he
took it that Barnes's hotel would form a convenient resting-place and
cover until such time as he saw his way to crying quits with the pair.
It is here that the odd part of the story begins, having its origin in
one of those freaks of coincidence which, after all, are not so common
in fiction as they are in actual life, and are certainly not stranger.
The _soi-disant_ Mr. Barnes had, in his palmy days, taken up his
residence for business purposes, of all places in the world, at
Dulborough. Finding that there had been a James Southam thereabouts,
and conceiving that it would be as well, in case of accidents, that
the credit of his misdeeds should stand a chance of being fathered on
the real James Southam instead of on the false one, he had not only
taken to himself my name, but had actually located himself in the
house in which I had been bred and born.
Jonas Hartopp regretted his treachery almost as soon as he had played
the traitor. Either he did not find the lady such a good bargain as he
thought he should, or, at any rate, not a commensurate exchange for
the good offices of his ingenious and profitable friend. He decided
after a while to extend the olive branch towards his whilom colleague.
It was with that idea in view that he had inserted the advertisement
addressed to James Southam, of Dulborough, which had caught my eye.
Under the circumstances, when the newly-fledged Mr. Barnes, acting his
_rĂ´le_ of waiter, heard the stranger on whom he was attending
pronounce his quondam cognomen, it was not surprising that he jumped
to the conclusion that the Philistines had tracked him to his lair,
and that, in consequence, he turned tail and ran.
Amelia Martin, having played the part of traitor herself, was quick at
suspecting intended treachery in another. She had an inkling of what
it was Jonas Hartopp, _alias_ Duncan Rothwell, proposed to do. The
pair had a violent quarrel the night before he went to town. She
followed him without his being conscious of the fact, on that eventful
journey, in a dangerous mood; and in what, doubtless, was a moment
half of fear and half of frenzy, she struck him dead. The evidence at
the inquest, and the discovery that there was a real James Southam in
the world, and that "Duncan Rothwell," therefore, had started on a
futile quest, gave her the idea of removing suspicion from herself by
attributing the crime to me--which ingenious plan she might have
carried to a successful issue, and I been hanged for what I never had
the faintest thought of doing, if the false James Southam had not come
on the scene in the very nick of time. It was she who placed the knife
with which she had done the deed behind the wainscot in my bedroom!
The trial of Amelia Martin for the murder of Jonas Hartopp, during
which this tale was unfolded, continued for a week. On her behalf
medical evidence was brought to show that she suffered from periodical
attacks of mania, during which she could not justly be held
responsible for her actions--for which condition of affairs Mr.
Barnes's mesmeric experiments had probably something to do. She was
sentenced to be confined as a criminal lunatic during her Majesty's
pleasure.
Mr. Barnes's suicide in his cell, on the night before he was to be
brought to trial--for, in spite of the assistance which he rendered in
the case of Amelia Martin, the police, apparently, had no intention of
letting him go "scot free"--was the sensation of a "special edition."
"Mrs. Barnes" sold the hotel and retired into private life. At
present, I believe, she is residing with some relatives in a corner of
far-off Canada. As for me, I still seem very far from being on the
road which leads to the making of a fortune; but, at any rate, I am
not at present out of employment, and I sincerely trust that the time
is very far distant when I shall be.
The End.
MR. ELY'S ENGAGEMENT
CHAPTER I
THE FIRST WOOER
Number Two, Draper's Gardens, the office of Mr. John Ash, dealer in
stocks and shares. Time, noon. Mr. Ash, with his hat pushed on to the
back of his head, seated at a table studying a letter.
"Whatever women find to write about beats me. A man puts a volume
inside two lines. A woman puts two lines inside a volume."
Mr. Ash rustled the letter irritably in his hands. It was a voluminous
production, written by a feminine pen, crossed and recrossed in a way
which, in these days of cheap paper and cheap postage, none but a
feminine pen would dream of.
"However a man is supposed to read it is more than I can tell. I can
just make out the opening: 'My dearest guardian,'--yes, dear at any
price! And the signature--where is it? I know I saw it somewhere. Yes,
of course, there it is--straggling across the date and the address:
'Your affectionate ward, Lily Truscott'!"
He laid the letter down, and thrust his hands into his
breeches-pockets, leaned back in his chair, and began to whistle
softly beneath his breath.
"I wish I could get some one to marry her--a decent sort of man.
Though, upon my word, if this sort of thing is to go on"--he glanced
at the letter with a look of mild despair--"I sha'n't mind who it is.
She knows I hate letters--that's why she keeps on writing them. If two
men can't know each other without one of them dying and leaving the
other with his daughter on his hands, no wonder a man likes to keep
his circle of acquaintance small. And when the girl's got looks and
money, God help the man who's got to stay and mind her! Well, here
goes. I suppose I'll have to answer it, or she'll be writing again
to-morrow to know if I am ill."
Taking up the letter he regarded it with a look of ineffable disgust.
"What she says I don't know. Rather than decipher these hieroglyphics
I'd lose a hundred pounds. Anyhow, here goes to make the best of it."
Drawing towards him a sheet of paper and a pen he began to nibble the
end of the pen.
"What the dickens shall I say? How can a man answer a letter when he
doesn't know what is in it!"
He began to write, indulging in a sort or commentary by the way.
"MY DEAR LILY,--I have read your charming letter with the greatest
interest. (I have! I have!) You are indeed a mistress of the
epistolary art. (I hope she won't imagine that's writ sarkastick. Now,
what shall I say?) The account which you give of the doings of your
neighbourhood (I hope that's safe--it ought to be, women always do
talk about that kind of thing) is most entertaining. (Most!) It is
with the greatest pleasure that I hear of your continuance in good
health. (I wonder if she says anything about her being ill?) I am glad
to hear, too, that your aunt, Mrs. Clive, is still in the enjoyment of
nature's greatest blessing. (I wonder if she mentions the old girl's
name!) Pray convey to her my compliments. (Old fool! Now for something
to wind up with.) I envy you your peaceful sojourn amidst summer's
scenic splendours. (Not so bad! 'summer's scenic splendours.') Tied as
I am to the Juggernaut of commerce, I can, however, but look and long.
(I wouldn't live in a place like that for thirty thousand a year.)
"Your affectionate guardian,
"JOHN ASH."
"I think that'll do. It will, at any rate, prevent her writing again
to-morrow to know if I am ill."
While he was examining, with a certain satisfaction, this example of
polite correspondence, a voice was heard inquiring for him in the
office without: "Mr. Ash in?"
When Mr. Ash heard the voice, an acidulated expression appeared upon
his countenance.
"Ely! What does the fool want here? It's not so very long ago since I
very nearly had to hurt his head."
"All right; you needn't trouble him. I'll show myself in."
The owner of the voice did show himself in. He was a dapper little
man, with fair hair and a little fair moustache, the ends of which
were arranged with the utmost nicety, and a pair of rather washed-out
blue eyes, which could, however, look keen enough when they pleased.
He was what might be described as a bandbox sort of man. Beautiful
grey trousers fitted over exquisite patent shoes. A spotless white
waistcoat relieved an irreproachable black coat. His necktie was
arranged in an absolutely perfect little bow. His hat gleamed as
though it had just that moment left the manufacturer's hands. He
carried a metal pencil-case, and one of those long, thin note-books
which gentlemen of the Stock Exchange use to enter their bargains in.
A diamond ring sparkled on the little finger of his left hand, and in
the button-hole of his coat, backed by a sprig of maiden-hair, was a
sweet blush-rose.
This beautiful little gentleman seemed to be satisfied with himself
and all the world.
"Surprised to see me, I daresay."
His rather metallic voice did not altogether accord with the radiancy
of his appearance. One expected flute-like notes to come from him. His
actual tones were sharp and shrill.
"I am; considering that last time I had the privilege of your
conversation you were good enough to say I was a thief."
The dapper little man stood before the empty stove picking his
beautiful white teeth with his metal pencil-case.
"Well, Ash, business is business, and no man likes to be robbed, you
know."
"Is that what you have come to tell me? Because, if so, you can impart
the information equally well while I am pitching you through the
window."
The little man did not seem at all annoyed. He did not even seem
amused. He appeared to be quite accustomed to that sort of speech. He
seemed to take it for granted, at any rate.
"Well, no--quite the other way. Fact is, I'm looking for a wife."
"A what?"
"A wife."
"The deuce you are! And do you think I've a selection on view here?"
"Not a selection. You've got one."
"What the dickens do you mean?"
"Come, Ash, you know. It's your ward, Miss Truscott."
Mr. Ash gave a loud whistle of surprise. Then he turned in his chair
and stared at the dapper little man. The dapper little man went on, in
the calmest, matter-of-fact sort of way--
"The fact is, I'm sick of chambers, and I'm sick of dining at the
club. I want a house, and I don't care to take a house unless I take a
wife. Why shouldn't it be Miss Truscott, Ash?"
He paused as if for a reply. But if he did, none came.
"There's another thing. You know Rosenbaum?"
Mr. Ash signified assent.
"He wants to plant one of his girls on me. All six of them, so far as
I can see. He's always shying them at my head. Besides, he's been
hammered twice. If he went again, where should I be, I'd like to know.
Not to mention that the whole six of them have got carbuncles instead
of noses, and moustaches quite as good as mine."
"I did hear that you were engaged to a Miss Rosenbaum."
"Then you heard wrong; I ain't. Why shouldn't it be Miss Truscott,
Ash? I've got something and she's got something. I tell you fairly, if
she hadn't it wouldn't do. And if we pulled together, you and I, we
might put something in each other's way."
He winked at Mr. Ash. Mr. Ash grinned, and turned aside. He regarded
the letter on his desk.
"Have you spoken to her yet?"
"Not a word. I wanted first to have things clear with you. I'll run
down to-morrow if it's all serene."
Mr. Ash appeared to be turning the matter over in his mind. "There's
no man in England that girl need ask to marry her."
"I'm sure I never said there was."
"Ah, I daresay if you were to take nine men out of ten and heap them
in a crowd, she might take her pick out of the lot!"
"If it comes to that, I might take my pick out of a few. Frederic
Ely's a man who never need go begging."
Mr. Ash smiled. His smile was scarcely flattering to his friend. He
continued to turn the matter over in his mind. Suddenly he got up.
"Ely, I like you. We've had our differences, but as you say, that's
because we're both men of business, and like to see the entries on the
right side of the ledger."
That was not exactly what Mr. Ely had said but no matter.
"Lily Truscott's a girl in a thousand--in million, sir. I know her--I
know her well. There's nothing in that girl's heart which is hidden
from me, and that girl's heart's all good, and that's something to say
of a girl at this time of day. If she were my daughter, and I were her
father, there's no man to whom I should be more willing to give her,
sir, than you. Take her, sir; take her! and I wish you joy!"
He turned away, but whether it was to hide a tear or even some deeper
sign of heartfelt emotion, is a difficult thing to say. Mr. Ely did
not appear much touched.
"That's the time of day, old man. You send her along a line to say I'm
on the road; prepare her mind, you know."
If Mr. Ash did not know, at least Mr. Ely winked.
"I'll be up in time. If you write to her now, she'll get it the first
thing in the morning, and she'll have time to settle herself before I
come. Ta, ta! See you in the house!"
Mr. Ely moved towards the door. Mr. Ash spoke to him just as he
reached it.
"How about that Erie syndicate?"
Mr. Ely paused. He stared steadily at Mr. Ash's back.
For some reason Mr. Ash continued with his back turned away.
"You help me with this and I'll help you with that. I can't say fairer
than that, my boy."
Apparently Mr. Ash did not seem to think he could, for when Mr. Ely
was gone, and the door was closed, he indulged in a little quiet
laughter. He reseated himself in his chair and began to nurse his
knee.
"I think--yes--I think that will do. Ely's a curious combination; in
business matters one of the shrewdest men I know, out of them one of
the greatest idiots on earth. However, I think that it will do. I'll
just add a postscript to that letter of mine."
He drew the letter towards him, and to the end of it tagged the
following--
"P.S.--By the way, a friend of yours--Mr. Frederic Ely--will be with
you to-morrow morning--perhaps almost as soon as you get this. He is a
gentleman for whose character I have the greatest respect. He will ask
my dear Lily a question in which both he and I are deeply interested.
I earnestly trust that my dear Lily's heart will answer 'Yes.'"
He scanned the P.S. with admiring eyes.
"I call that neat but not gaudy. None of the awful guardian there.
And, upon my word, I don't see why she shouldn't have him; one idiot's
as good as another, and if he chooses he can be as good as a hundred
thousand pounds to me."
Folding the letter, he placed it in an envelope and addressed it:
"Miss Truscott, The Cliff, Shanklin, Isle of Wight." While he was
still engaged in this proceeding, the clear, ringing tones of a man's
voice was heard in the outer office, and for the second time that
morning the door of Mr. Ash's sanctum was unceremoniously opened, and,
again unannounced, a second visitor came in.
CHAPTER II
THE SECOND WOOER
A very different visitor this to the first. A tall, stalwart fellow,
with a guardsman's chest, a long fair beard which hid his neck, and a
huge pair of the most ridiculous moustaches. No bandbox fellow he!
Dressed in a shooting suit, crowned by a soft, deer-stalker's hat,
flourishing what was a bludgeon rather than a stick in his hand, he
seemed hardly the type of figure which is generally to be found in the
neighbourhood of Capel Court.
"Hallo, Ash, tracked you down, old man."
His voice was like himself: there was plenty of it. It should have
been worth a fortune to him on the Stock Exchange.
"Summers! Whatever brings you here?"
"What doesn't often bring a man to the City--love, and my lady's
eyes."
"What!"
Mr. Ash fairly sprang out of his chair. He stared at his visitor with
bewildered surprise.
"You may well stare, and stare your fill. I'm worth staring at to-day,
for I just don't feel as though I know whether I'm standing on my head
or heels. The greatest stroke of luck has happened to me that ever
happened to a man before--I've sold my picture for a thousand pounds."
"You've done what?"
"Ah, I knew you wouldn't believe it. It does sound incredible, doesn't
it? But it is a fact, though, all the same. I've sold my New Gallery
picture, 'A Dream of Love: an Idyll, by William Summers,' for a
thousand pounds."
"And have you come all the way to Draper's Gardens to tell me so? It's
very good of you, I'm sure.
"It would be good of me if that was all, but it's not; there happens
to be more. What does that sale mean? It means that I've made a
hit--that I've got a commission for another at the same price--that my
fortune is made. I'm a man of fortune, sir."
"I assure you I am very glad to hear it; but I hope you will excuse my
mentioning that I still have my fortune to make, and that this is the
busiest hour of the day."
"All right, wait half a jiffy, man. Keep yourself in hand, for upon my
soul I can't. What does my being a man of fortune mean? It means that
I have become a marrying man--a man who has a right to marry. So I'm
going to marry."
"I congratulate you with all my heart. Do I know the lady?"
"Well, rather, considering that she's your ward."
"What!"
"Miss Truscott's going to be my wife. I thought I would just drop in
and let you know."
"Drop in and let me know! If this isn't the coolest proceeding I ever
heard of in my life!"
The amazed Mr. Ash stared at his visitor, who seemed, so to speak, to
be laughing all over his face. Then he dropped into his chair, and
stared at the addressed letter which lay upon his desk. He appeared to
be conscious of a certain confusion of mind.
"Good gad!" he told himself; "just now I was wishing that some one
would come along and marry her. This is a case of one's wishes being
too plentifully granted. It strikes me there's one too many."
Then he addressed himself to his visitor aloud--
"Really, Mr. Summers, I fail to understand you."
"It's plain enough."
"It may be plain enough to you. You must allow me to say that it is
anything but plain enough to me. May I ask when you made what I must
call this surreptitious request to my ward for her hand?"
"Oh, that's just the point. I haven't spoken to her yet."
"You haven't spoken to her yet! I understood you to say that she was
going to marry you?"
"That's right enough--so she is."
"This may be plain enough to you, but it is really getting still less
plain to me. You evidently think that her guardian's consent is not
required. May I ask if you think that the lady's is unnecessary too?"
"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your
philosophy--I see that plainly, Ash! Don't you know that there is a
language more eloquent than speech? That it is possible for a man and
woman to understand each other perfectly and yet not interchange a
word? We understand each other like that, my friend."
"I should be sorry to say anything which might lessen your
self-conceit, but I think you are mistaken, Mr. Summers."
"Oh, no, I'm not."
"But I say you are! Hang it, sir, I never saw a more 'Came, saw, and
conquered' style about a man before. If I were you, I would wait for
victory to forward your despatch. As it is, I happen to know that Miss
Truscott is engaged already."
So saying, Mr. Ash slipped his letter into the inner pocket of his
coat.
"What!"
"For goodness' sake, Mr. Summers, don't shout the ceiling down! You
will have the people coming in from the street, not to speak of the
clerks outside."
"If I didn't know that you meant it for a jest, I should say it was a
lie."
"You may say exactly what you please, it won't alter the fact."
"The fact! You call that a fact! I'll go down to Shanklin by the next
train, and learn the truth from her own lips."
Mr. Summers made for the door, but Mr. Ash interposed; he was
conscious that it would be advisable to induce this impetuous suitor
to hasten slowly.
"One moment, Mr. Summers. I am sure you would be unwilling to do
another an injury, even unconsciously. If you will restrain your
impatience I will endeavour to explain to you exactly how the matter
lies."
"How the matter lies? That's just what it does do--it lies! Or some
one does, at any rate."
"Mr. Summers, you are a man of honour--we are both men of honour, I
trust. Would you have me break my plighted word?"
"Break your plighted word? That depends. If you've plighted your word
to break my heart, by George! I'd have you break it, then!"
"Let me remove this matter from the realms of romance into the regions
of common sense."
"When you City men begin to talk about common sense you mean something
very common indeed."
"Mr. Summers, this is a very solemn subject to me."
"Solemn subject to you! I wonder what sort of subject you think it is
to me. Is she going to be my wife or yours?"
"Miss Truscott will be the wife of neither."
"Won't she? By George, we'll see!"
Again Mr. Summers made helter-skelter for the door. Again Mr. Ash made
haste to interpose.
"If you will permit me to speak half a dozen consecutive words without
interruption, I will make it plain to you that what I have at heart is
the interest of all concerned."
"Except me! Never mind, I'll listen. Out with your half a dozen
words."
Mr. Summers dropped into a chair in a way which must have been a
severe test of its solidity, and brought his bludgeon down upon the
floor with a bang. Mr. Ash started. He felt that this was a sort of
suitor he had not bargained for.
"The case in a nutshell is simply this. Just before you came there was
a gentleman here who made exactly the same proposal you have done. He,
too, solicited the honour of Miss Truscott's hand."
Mr. Summers was up like a rocket. Again his bludgeon came down with a
bang.
"The devil there was! Confound his impudence! What was the scoundrel's
name?"
"The scoundrel's name is immaterial. The point is that I agreed that
he should go down to Shanklin to-morrow, and, in proper form, make to
the lady the offer of his hand."
"To-morrow, did you? Then I am off tonight."
"Still one moment, Mr. Summers, if you please. You appeared to be so
certain of the lady's affection that I was scarcely prepared to find
you so alarmed at the prospect of a rival in the field."
"Alarmed! Not I! I will back my darling's truth against the world!"
"Then supposing, instead of confining yourself to words, you prove
your faith by deeds. Let this man try his luck to-morrow. If he fails,
there is the next day left for you.
"Look here, Ash; when he's failed, will you consent to Lily being
mine?"
"If he fails and Miss Truscott gives her consent, then I will."
"Then it's agreed! To-morrow, the beggar shall have his chance! The
day after, I'll try mine."
Just then the door opened and Mr. Ely appeared. Mr. Summers rushed to
him with outstretched hand.
"Hallo, Ely, haven't seen you for an age! You're looking queer! You
ought to try a change of air."
"Think so? To-morrow I'm going out of town."
"Are you? That's odd! The day after I'm going too."
These remarks were exchanged while the two gentlemen shook hands.
CHAPTER III
MR. ELY ARRIVES
Miss Truscott was evidently not in the pleasantest frame of mind. It
was unfortunate, for she was the kind of maid one feels instinctively
ought always to be in a pleasant frame of mind. Tall, slender, with
great, big eyes, sunny hair, and the sweetest smile. The latter,
however, was conspicuous by its absence, as she sat at the
breakfast-table with an open letter in her hand.
She was at breakfast with her aunt. Mrs. Clive was a precise old lady,
who always indoors wore lace cuffs and collar, and the neatest of
caps. It was a peculiarity of hers that she was never known to be
anything but cool and self-possessed. Sometimes her niece was neither.
Then it increased the young lady's sense of aggravation to observe how
her aunt's demeanour contrasted with her own--as, for instance, it did
now.
"You don't seem to be in the least surprised or annoyed or hurt. You
quite take it for granted that I should be insulted."
Mrs. Clive considered for a moment before she answered. She sat bolt
upright, her hands in her lap, the model of decorum.
"My dear Lily, the younger generation is impetuous."
Miss Truscott sighed. To be called impetuous under the circumstances
of the case seemed almost more than she could bear.
"I write to my guardian on the whole four sides of a sheet of paper to
tell him that I must get away from this dreadful place or I shall die,
and this is the answer he sends."
She spread the letter out before her on the table and read it aloud,
with comments by the way.
"'My dear Lily' (yes, dear at any price, I know), 'I have read your
charming letter with the greatest interest.' (Did anybody ever hear
the like of that? He read my charming letter with the greatest
interest, when I wrote to tell him that I quite believed that I should
die!) 'You are indeed a mistress of the epistolary art.' (That is a
pretty compliment to pay when you write and tell a person that life is
not worth living!) 'The account which you give of the doings of your
neighbours is most entertaining.' (Now I never mentioned a single word
about anything but the state of my mind!) 'It is with the greatest
pleasure that I hear of your continuance in good health.' (When the
whole letter was written to tell him that I was nearly dead!) 'I am
glad to hear, too, that your aunt, Mrs. Clive, is still in the
enjoyment of nature's greatest blessing.' (What nature's greatest
blessing is I don't know, but I am sure I never even breathed your
name.) 'Pray convey to her my compliments.' (With pleasure, aunt!) 'I
envy you your sojourn amidst summer's scenic splendours.' (That is
what he says, and I actually told him that I was convinced that if I
stayed any longer amidst what he calls 'summer's scenic splendours' I
should just go raving mad!) 'Tied as I am to the Juggernaut of
commerce, I can, however, but look and long.' Now did you--did you
ever hear anything like that? And yet you say the younger generation
is impetuous! I should just like to have my affectionate guardian
here; I'd let him know what the Juggernaut really was!"
The young lady seemed a little excited, but the elder one was still
quite calm.
"You have forgotten the postscript, my dear."
"Forgotten the postscript! Oh, aunty, don't I wish I could!' By the
way, a friend of yours, Mr. Frederic Ely, will be with you to-morrow
morning, perhaps almost as soon as you get this.' Perhaps the wretch
is actually on the doorstep now!"
"Lily, Lily! How can you talk like that!"
"So he is a wretch! But never mind, it's all the same to me. 'He is a
gentleman for whose character I have the greatest respect. He will ask
my dear Lily a question in which both he and I are deeply interested.
I earnestly trust that my dear Lily's heart will answer Yes.' Talk
about a woman's postscript! Mr. Ash puts nothing in his letter, and
the whole library of the British Museum in his P.S.! Well, aunty, what
do you think of that?"
"I congratulate you, my dear, on the near approach of your settlement
in life."
Miss Truscott gave a little shriek, and then was dumb. She glared at
her aunt as though she could believe neither her eyes or ears. Mrs.
Clive went placidly on.
"It is indeed gratifying to learn that Mr. Ash has made his choice."
"Who has made his choice?" asked Miss Truscott between her little
teeth.
"One for whose character he has the greatest respect. Such words
coming from Mr. Ash are satisfactory in the extreme. You are indeed
fortunate in possessing a guardian who has your interests so entirely
at heart."
"What are you talking about?" asked Miss Truscott. "Do you think I
shall marry this man?"
"Lily!" exclaimed Mrs. Give. "You have such a singular way of
expressing yourself. But perhaps"--the old lady smoothed her
gown--"perhaps you are a little surprised."
Miss Truscott gave a sort of gasp.
"I am," she said. "I am a little surprised!"
"I suppose we are all when our turns come. I remember in my young days
when my dear mother told me that I was to marry Mr. Clive."
"Told you you were to marry Mr. Clive?"
"Yes, my dear. And I remember quite well how bewildered I was at
first."
"Didn't you love him, then?"
"My dear, how can you ask me such a question! We were comparative
strangers. I had only been acquainted with him about three months."
"Three months! Good gracious! Why, I thought three minutes was long
enough to fall in love!"
"Lily, I am amazed to hear you talk so flippantly! It is plain that it
is quite time that you had more settled views of life. Among the new
responsibilities on which you are now about to enter I trust that you
will learn the solemnity of woman's position in the world, and the
deference which she owes to the married state."
Miss Truscott laughed. Her laughter was of rather an hysterical kind,
as though it were near akin to tears. But Mrs. Clive was shocked. She
regarded Miss Truscott with what she intended to be considered as
severe disapprobation. Then, with her most stately air, she rose and
left the room. Pausing at the door, however, she delivered herself of
a final expression of her opinion.
"Lily, I am disappointed in you. I can only hope that Mr. Ely will not
have cause to be disappointed too."
When Miss Truscott was left alone she sat quite still, looking into
vacancy. The smile about the corners of her mouth was hardly up to its
usual character for sweetness. There was a glitter in her eyes which
gave them quite a new expression. Suddenly she leaned her face upon
her hands and shivered. It could hardly have been with cold, for the
sun was shining and the day was warm. Then she got up, and began
pacing restlessly about the room.
"Is it a dream? Is it a dream?" Her hands were clasped with a sort of
hysteric energy.
"What does it matter! He has forgotten me! What fools we women are!"
She took out a locket which was hidden in the bosom of her dress, and
gazed upon the face which it contained.
"Willy!"--how softly she breathed the name--"twelve months since you
told me that story with your eyes--twelve months ago! Where have you
been this weary time! I suppose it was an incident with you. I have
heard those sort of things are incidents with men. What a fool I was
to take it seriously! What fools we women are! I ought to have known
that it was the fashion with Mr. Summers to love and ride away."
She stood gazing at the portrait. All at once something angered
her--some recollection, perhaps, of long ago. She snapped the slender
chain to which it was attached, and flung the locket on the floor. As
if not content with this degradation of her treasure, she placed her
little foot upon it and crushed it beneath her heel.
"What fools we women are!"
For a moment she looked upon the ruins she had wrought. The pretty
little locket was crushed all out of shape. Then came penitence, and
stooping down with streaming eyes she picked the broken locket up and
pressed it to her lips; and, still upon her knees, flinging herself
face downwards on to the seat of a great arm-chair, she cried as
though her heart would break.
"I didn't mean to do it, Willy, I didn't mean to do it; but it's all
the same, it doesn't matter whom I marry now!"
She was only a girl: and it is a charming characteristic of the better
sort of girls that they will do foolish things at times.
But there was very little of the girl about her when Mr. Ely came; she
was the stateliest of young ladies then. The air of having just come
out of a bandbox was more apparent about Mr. Ely in the country even
than in town. He was one of those very few men who are never seen out
of a frock-coat. Throgmorton Street or a Devonshire lane it was the
same to him. Wherever he was his attire remained unaltered. But it
must be allowed that he was conscious that things were not
compatible--patent shoes, top-hat, frock-coat, and a Devonshire lane.
So from the Devonshire lane he religiously stayed away. He did his
ruralising in centres of fashion where his frock-coat was in place,
and not in the equivalents of the Devonshire lane. He was not affected
by the modern craze for the country side. He objected to it strongly:
a fact which he made plain as soon as he appeared on the scene.
Mrs. Clive received him. She began the conversation on what she fondly
conceived were the usual lines.
"How glad you must be to get into the country. It must be such a
change from town."
"Change! I should think it is a change! Beastly change, by George!"
Mrs. Clive was a little shocked. The adverb did not fall sweetly on
her ear. But Mr. Ely went glibly on. He had a grievance which he
wished to air.
"Why they don't have decent cabs at the station I don't know. If there
was a live man in the place he'd put some hansoms on the road. Fly,
they called the thing I came up in! Fly! I should like to know what's
the aboriginal definition of 'to crawl'! And dusty! I left my mark
upon that seat, and that seat left its mark on me. I feel like a
regular dustman--upon my word I do."
Miss Truscott made her first appearance at the luncheon-table. The
meal was not an entire success. This was partly owing to the fact that
Miss Trustcott seemed to have gone back into the glacial or
prehistoric period, and partly because Mr. Ely still had his grievance
on his mind. Mrs. Clive did her best to entertain the company, but in
spite of her meritorious efforts the conversation languished.
"And how are things in the City?" She felt that this was the sort of
question she ought to ask.
"All over the shop!"
Mrs. Clive started. She felt that the answer was not so explanatory as
it might have been. Still she bravely persevered.
"Dear me! I suppose that commercial matters are affected by the
seasons." She thought that this sort of remark would go home to the
commercial mind.
"Eh? Oh, yes; rather! I should think they were! In fine weather
traffics go up all round. Noras have gone up one, Doras one
seven-eighths, Trunks are flat: there's a rig-out there and rates are
pooled, but this side bulls are in the right hole pretty near all
along the line. Bertha's about the only one got stuck."
Mrs. Clive was speechless. She looked at Miss Truscott with imploring
eyes. But that young lady was tranquilly engaged with the contents of
her plate.
"Poor girl!"
It was a study to see Mr. Ely's face when the old lady made this
innocent remark.
"I beg your pardon! What did you say?"
"I said, poor girl! I hope she has done nothing wrong."
"Who's done nothing wrong?"
"The young lady you mentioned. Miss Bertha, I think you said. I am not
acquainted with her surname."
Mr. Ely was silent. He was not a man gifted with a keen sense of
humour, and was not at all clear in his own mind that the old lady was
not amusing herself at his expense. Mrs. Clive, conscious that
something was wrong, went painfully plodding on.
"I trust, Mr. Ely, that I have not, unintentionally, said something to
hurt your feelings. Is the young lady a friend of yours?"
"What young lady?"
Mr. Ely placed his knife and fork together, with a little clatter, on
his plate. Was she at it again? This was more than a man could stand.
"Miss Bertha--the young lady you mentioned."
"Bertha's not a lady."
"Not a lady! Dear me! One of the lower classes! I perceive! Now I
understand. Ah, I'm afraid that from them anything may be expected
nowadays."
Mr. Ely turned pink, not with suppressed mirth, but with what was very
much like rage. For some moments an unprejudiced spectator might have
debated in his own mind as to whether he was not about to be profane.
But if it were so, he conquered his impious tendency, and adopted
another line of conduct instead. He rose from his seat. "If you will
allow me, I'll go outside for a change of air"; and without waiting
for the required permission he marched through the French window out
on to the lawn. The old lady turned to her niece--
"My dear Lily, what have I said or done?"
"My dear aunt, I believe that Bertha, in the slang of the Stock
Exchange, signifies the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. I
suspect that Mr. Ely imagines that you have been amusing yourself at
his expense."
Mrs. Clive was aghast.
"Go to him, Lily. Don't leave him alone in his present state of mind.
He might return at once to town!"
Miss Truscott rose with her most tranquil air.
"We might survive his departure if he did."
But her aunt was shocked.
"Lily, it pains me to hear such language from your lips. You are now
approaching one of the most solemn moments of your life. Rise to the
occasion, child, and show that, although still a child in years, you
have within you the wherewithal with which to make a woman in good
time."
Miss Truscott looked as if she could have said something if she would,
but she refrained. She left the room without a word.
CHAPTER IV
MR. ELY WOOES
The interview between Mr. Ely and the object of his heart's devotion
was not so solemn as it might have been. Possibly that was in a
measure owing to what had gone before. But it must be owned that Miss
Truscott's mood was hardly attuned to the occasion. We must also, at
the same time, allow that Mr. Ely's demeanour was hardly that of the
ideal wooer.
"Your aunt seems to have a nice idea of business! I've heard a few
things, but she beats all! I thought she was getting at me, upon my
word I did!"
This was scarcely the remark with which to open a tender interview.
Miss Truscott said nothing. She was seated in a low garden-chair,
hatless, her little feet peeping from under the hem of her summer
gown. She seemed sufficiently cool just then, but her silence did not
appear to be altogether to Mr. Ely's liking. He himself did not seem
to be as cool as he might have been.
"I believe, Miss Truscott, that Mr. Ash has told you what's brought me
here."
Mr. Ely's tone seemed even waspish--not loverlike at all.
"Indeed!" Miss Truscott just parted her lips and let the word drop
out, that was all.
"May I ask what I am to understand by that?"
Just then a fat white dog, of the doormat species, appeared on the top
of the steps. Miss Truscott addressed this animal--
"Pompey! Pompey! Good dog! Come here!"
The "good dog" referred to slowly waddled across the grass, and on
reaching Miss Truscott's chair was raised to the seat of honour upon
that lady's knee.
"Are you interested in dogs, Mr. Ely? If so, I am sure you must like
Pompey. He generally bites strangers at first, but perhaps after a
time he won't bite you!"
"I'll take care he doesn't get a chance--either first or last."
"Why not? He bit a piece of cloth out of the Curate's trousers the
other day, but Mr. Staines says that he doesn't think his teeth quite
met in the calf of his leg."
Mr. Ely gasped. His temperature seemed rapidly to increase.
"I did not come here to talk about dogs: and you'll excuse my
mentioning that you have not yet informed me as to whether Mr. Ash has
told you what I did come for."
"Let me see!" Miss Truscott took out her guardian's letter and
referred to it before Mr. Ely's distended eyes. "Hum--hum--Pompey, lie
down! There, now Pompey has torn it all to bits!" As indeed the animal
had, and was now chewing some of the fragments as though they were a
sort of supplementary meal. "What shall I do? Pompey has the most
extraordinary taste. It runs in the family, I think. Do you know that
his mother once ate nearly the whole of a pair of my old shoes?"
Mr. Ely wiped his brow. He was becoming very warm indeed. He seated
himself in another garden chair. For a moment he contemplated drawing
it closer to Miss Truscott's side, but the thought of Pompey and his
extraordinary taste--which ran in his family--induced him to refrain.
"Miss Truscott, I'm a business man, and I like to do things in a
business kind of way."
Mr. Ely paused. He felt that he was feeling his way. But the young
lady disarranged his plans.
"By the way, Mr. Ely, have you been up Regent Street just lately?"
"Been up Regent Street?"
"Can you tell me if there are any nice things in the shop-windows?"
Mr. Ely did not exactly gasp this time. He choked down something in
his throat. What it was we cannot say.
"Miss Truscott, I'm a business man----"
"You said that before." The words were murmured as Miss Truscott
stroked Pompey's woolly head.
"Said it before! I say it again! I wish you'd allow me to get right
through."
"Right through what?"
"Right through what! Right through what I have to say!"
"Oh, go on, pray. I hope I haven't interrupted you?"
"Interrupted me!" Mr. Ely snorted; no other word will describe the
sound he made. "I say, I'm a business man----"
"Third time of asking!"
Mr. Ely got up. He looked very cross indeed. Pompey snarled. That
faithful animal seemed to scent battle in the air.
"Well, I'm--hanged!"
We fear that Mr. Ely would have preferred another termination, but he
contented himself with "hanged." Miss Truscott looked up. She allowed
her long, sweeping eyelashes gradually to unveil her eyes. She
regarded Mr. Ely with a look of the sweetest, most innocent surprise.
"Mr. Ely! Whatever is there wrong?"
Mr. Ely was obliged to take a step or two before he could trust
himself to speak. As he was sufficiently warm already the exercise did
not tend to make him cool. Under the circumstances, he showed a
considerable amount of courage in coming to the point with a rush.
"Miss Truscott, I want a wife!"
"You want a what?"
"A wife! Don't I say it plain enough? I want a wife!"
"I see. You want a wife." With her calmest, coolest air Miss Truscott
continued stroking Pompey's head. "Did you notice how they are wearing
the hats in town?"
Mr. Ely sprang--literally sprang!--about an inch and a half from the
ground. "What the dickens do I know about the hats in town?"
"Mr. Ely! How excited you do get! I thought everybody knew about the
hats in town--I mean, whether they wear them on the right side or the
left."
Mr. Ely was not an excitable man as a rule, but he certainly did seem
excited now. His handkerchief, which he had kept in his hand since the
commencement of the interview, he had kneaded into a little ball which
was hard as stone.
"Miss Truscott, I'll--I'll give a sovereign to any charity you like to
name if you'll stick to the point for just two minutes."
"Hand over the sovereign!"
Mr. Ely was taken aback. Miss Truscott held out her small, white hand
with a promptitude which surprised him.
"I--I said that I would give a sovereign to any charity you like to
name if you'll stick to the point for just two minutes."
"Cash in advance, and I'll keep to any point you like to name for
ten."
Mr. Ely was doubtful. Miss Truscott looked at him with eyes which were
wide enough open now. Her hand was unflinchingly held out. Mr. Ely
felt in the recesses of his waistcoat pocket. He produced a sovereign
purse, and from this sovereign purse he produced a coin.
"It's the first time I ever heard of a man having to pay a sovereign
to ask a woman to be his wife!"
"Hand over the sovereign!" She became possessed of the golden coin.
"This sovereign will be applied to the charitable purpose of erecting
a monument over Pompey's mother's grave. Now, Mr. Ely, I'm your man."
Mr. Ely seemed a little subdued. The business-like way in which he had
been taken at his word perhaps caused him to feel a certain respect
for the lady's character. He reseated himself in the garden-chair.
"I've already said that I want a wife."
"Do you wish me to find you one? I can introduce you to several of my
friends. I know a young lady in the village, aged about thirty-eight,
who has an impediment in her speech, who would make an excellent
companion for your more silent hours."
"The wife I want is you."
"That is very good of you, I'm sure."
There was a pause. The lady, with a little smile, tranquilly tickled
Pompey with the sovereign she had earned. The gentleman fidgeted with
his handkerchief.
"Well, Miss Truscott, am I to be gratified?"
"Why do you want me? Won't some one else do as well?"
Immediately the gentleman became a little rose.
"May I ask you for an answer to my question?"
"You haven't asked me a question yet."
"Will you be my wife?"
The question was put in a rather louder key than, in such cases, is
understood to be the rule. Miss Truscott raised her head, and for some
moments kept her glance fixed upon the gentleman, as though she were
trying to read something in his face. Then she lowered her glance and
made answer thus--
"Frankly--you say you are a business man--let us, as you suggest,
understand each other in a business kind of way. In asking me to be
your wife, you are not asking for--love?"
As she spoke of love her lips gave just the tiniest twitch.
"I believe that a wife is supposed to love her husband--as a rule."
"In your creed love comes after marriage?"
"At this present moment I'm asking you to be my wife."
"That's exactly what I understand. You're not even making a pretence
of loving me?"
"Miss Truscott, as you put it, I'm a business man. I have money, you
have money----"
"Let's put the lot together and make a pile. Really, that's not a bad
idea on the whole." It was the young lady who gave this rather
unexpected conclusion to his sentence. Then she looked at him steadily
with those great eyes of hers, whose meaning for the life of him he
could not understand. "I suppose that all you want from me is 'Yes';
and that in complete indifference as to whether I like you or do not?"
"If you didn't like me you wouldn't be sitting here."
"Really, that's not a bad idea again. You arrive at rapid conclusions
in your own peculiar way. I suppose if I told you that I could like a
man--love him better than my life--you would not understand."
"That sort of thing is not my line. I'm not a sentimental kind of man.
I say a thing and mean a thing and when I say I'll do a thing it's
just as good as done."
"Then all you want me to be is--Mrs. Ely?"
"What else do you suppose I want you to be? It's amazing how even the
most sensible women like to beat about the bush. Here have I asked you
a good five minutes to be my wife, and you're just coming to the
point. Why can't you say right out--Yes or No."
Miss Truscott shrugged her shoulders.
"I suppose it doesn't matter?"
"What doesn't matter?"
"What I say."
"By George, though, but it does!"
Miss Truscott leaned her head back in her chair. She put her hand
before her mouth as if to hide a yawn. She closed her eyes. She looked
more than half asleep.
"Then I will."
"Will what?"
"Say 'Yes.'"
"You mean that you will be my wife? It's a bargain, mind!"
"It is a bargain. That's just the proper word to use."
"That's all right. Then I'll send a wire to Ash to let him know it's
done."
"Yes, send a wire up to town to let him know it's done."
Mr. Ely moved towards the house. From her voice and manner Miss
Truscott still seemed more than half asleep; but hers was a curious
kind of sleepiness, for in the corner of each of her closed eyelids
there gleamed something that looked very like a drop of diamond dew.
Prosaic people might have said it was a tear.
CHAPTER V
MR. ELY DEPARTS
Mr. Ely returned to town on the following morning, and Miss Truscott
was an engaged young woman. The interval between the moment of her
becoming engaged and the departure of the gentleman was not--we are
rather at a loss for the proper word to use--let us put it, was not
exactly so pleasant as it might have been.
Although the man and the maid had plighted troth they certainly did
not seem like lovers; they scarcely even seemed to be friends. The
position seemed to be a little strained. Mr. Ely noticed this as the
day wore on. He resented it.
In the garden after dinner he relieved his mind. The lady was seated,
the admirable Pompey on her knee, so engaged in reading as to appear
wholly oblivious that the gentleman was in her neighbourhood. For some
time Mr. Ely fidgeted about in silence. The lady did not appear even
to notice that. At last he could keep still no longer.
"You seem very fond of reading?"
"I am." The lady did not even take her eyes off her book to answer
him, but read tranquilly on.
"I hope I'm not in your way."
"Not at all"; which was true enough. He might have been miles away for
all the notice the lady appeared to take of him.
"One has to come into the country to learn manners."
"One has to come into the country to do what?"
As if conscious that he was skating on thin ice, Mr. Ely endeavoured
to retrace his steps.
"Considering that only this morning you promised to be my wife, I
think that you might have something to say."
Partially closing the book, but keeping one slender finger within it
to mark the place, the lady condescended to look up.
"Why should you think that?"
"I believe it is usual for persons in our situation to have something
to say to each other, but I don't know, I'm sure."
The lady entirely closed her book and placed it on a little table at
her side. "What shall we talk about?"
The gentleman was still. Under such circumstances the most gifted
persons might have found it difficult to commence a conversation.
"Are you interested in questions of millinery?"
"In questions of millinery!"
"Or do you take a wider range, and take a living interest in the
burning questions of the progress of revolution and the advance of
man?"
Mr. Ely felt clear in his own mind that the lady was chaffing him, but
he did not quite see his way to tell her so.
"I'm fond of common sense."
"Ah, but common sense is a term which conveys such different meanings.
I suppose, that, in its strictest definition, common sense is the
highest, rarest sense of all. I suppose that you use the term in a
different way."
This was exasperating. Mr. Ely felt it was.
"I suppose you mean that I'm a fool."
"There again--who shall define folly? The noblest spirits of them all
have been by the world called fools."
Miss Truscott gazed before her with a rapt intensity of vision, as
though she saw the noble spirits referred to standing in the glow of
the western sky.
"I must say you have nice ideas of sociability."
"I have had my ideas at times. I have dreamed of a social intercourse
which should be perfect sympathy. But they were but dreams."
Mr. Ely held his peace. This sort of thing was not at all his idea of
conversation. It is within the range of possibility to suspect that
his idea of perfect conversation was perfect shop--an eternal
reiteration of the ins-and-outs and ups-and-downs of stocks and
shares. However that might be, it came to pass that neither of these
two people went in a loverlike frame of mind to bed. But this acted
upon each of them in different ways.
For instance, it was hours after Miss Truscott had retired to her
chamber before the young lady placed herself between the sheets. For a
long time she sat before the open window, looking out upon the
star-lit sky. Then she began restlessly pacing to and fro. All her
tranquillity seemed gone.
"I have been ill-mannered--and a fool!"
And again there was that hysteric interlacing of her hands which
seemed to be a familiar trick of hers when her mind was much
disturbed.
"I have made the greatest mistake of all. I have promised myself to a
man I--loathe."
She shuddered when she arrived at that emphatic word.
"A man with whom I have not one single thing in common; a man who
understands a woman as much as--less than Pompey does. I believe that
selfish Pompey cares for me much more. A man whose whole soul is bound
up in playing conjuring tricks with stocks and shares. And where are
all my dreams of love? Oh! they have flown away!"
Then she threw herself upon the bed and cried.
"Oh, Willy! Willy! why have you been false? If you had been only true!
I believe that I am so weak a thing that if you should call to me
to-morrow, I would come."
After she had had enough of crying--which was only after a very
considerable period had elapsed--she got up and dried her eyes--those
big eyes of hers, whose meaning for the life of him Mr. Ely could not
understand!
"What does it matter? I suppose that existence is a dead level of
monotony. If even for a moment you gain the heights, you are sure to
fall, and your state is all the worse because you have seen that there
are better things above."
This was the lady's point of view. The gentleman's was of quite
another kind. As he had said, sentiment was not at all his line. When
he reached his room, he wasted no time getting into bed. While he
performed his rapid toilet he considered the situation in his own
peculiar way.
"That's the most impudent girl I ever met."
This he told himself as he took off his coat.
"I like her all the better for it, too."
Here he removed his vest.
"She doesn't care for me a snap--not one single rap. I hate your
spoony kind of girl, the sort that goes pawing a man about. If she
begins by pawing you she'll be pawing another fellow soon. Oh! I've
seen a bit of it, I have!"
Here he removed his collar and tie.
"What I want's a woman who can cut a dash--not the rag-bag sort, all
flounces and fluster--but a high-toned dash, you know. The sort of
woman that can make all the other women want to have her life; who can
sit with two hundred other women in a room and make 'em all feel that
she doesn't know that there's another person there. By Jove! she'd do
it, too!"
Mr. Ely laughed. But perhaps--as he was a sort of man who never
laughed, in whom the bump of humour was entirely wanting--it would be
more correct to describe the sound he made as a clearing of the
throat. At this point he was engaged in details of the toilet into
which it would be unwise to enter. But we really cannot refrain from
mentioning what a very little man he looked in his shirt. Quite
different to the Mr. Ely of the white waistcoat and frockcoat.
The next morning he took his departure. He had been under the painful
necessity of spending one day away from town; he could not possibly
survive through two. In fact he tore himself away by the very earliest
train--in his habits he was an early little man--not with reluctance
but delight: by so early a train, indeed, that he had left long before
his lady-love came down. Mrs. Clive did the honours and sped the
parting guest. She, poor lady, was not used to quite such early hours
and felt a little out of sorts, but she did her best.
"Shall I give dear Lily a message when you are gone?"
Mr. Ely was swallowing ham and eggs as though he were engaged in a
match against time. A healthy appetite for breakfast was one of his
strong points.
"Tell her that dog of hers is ever so much too fat."
Pompey, who was at that moment reclining on a cushion on the rug, was
perhaps a trifle stout--say about as broad as he was long. Still, Mrs.
Clive did not like the observation all the same.
"Pompey is not Lily's dog, but mine."
"Ah! then if I were you, I'd starve the beggar for a week."
Mrs. Clive bridled. If she had a tender point it was her dog.
"I can assure you, Mr. Ely, that the greatest care is taken in the
selection of dear Pompey's food."
"That's where it is, you take too much. Shut him in the stable, with a
Spratt's biscuit to keep him company."
"A Spratt's biscuit!--Pompey would sooner die!"
"It wouldn't be a bad thing for him if he did. By the look of him he
can't find much fun in living--it's all that he can do to breathe. It
seems to me every woman must have some beast for a pet. An aunt of
mine has got a cat. Her cat ought to meet your dog. They'd both of
them be thinner before they went away."
It is not surprising that Mr. Ely did not leave an altogether pleasant
impression when he had gone. That last allusion to his aunt's cat
rankled in the old lady's mind.
"A cat! My precious Pompey!" She raised the apoplectic creature in her
arms; "when you have such an objection to a cat! It is dreadful to
think of such a thing, even when it is spoken only in jest."
But Mr. Ely had not spoken in jest. He was not a jesting kind of man.
When Miss Truscott made her appearance she asked no questions about
her lover. If he had sent a message, or if he indeed had gone, she
showed no curiosity upon these points at all. She seemed in a dreamy
frame of mind, as if her thoughts were not of things of life but of
things of air. She dawdled over the breakfast-table, eating nothing
all the while. And when she had dismissed the meal she dawdled in an
easy chair. Such behaviour was unusual for her, for she was not a
dawdling kind of girl.
CHAPTER VI
THE WOOING IN THE WOOD
In the afternoon she took a book and went for a ramble out of doors.
It was a novel of the ultra-sentimental school, and only the other day
the first portion of the story had impressed her with the belief that
it was written by a person who had sounded the heights and depths of
life. She thought differently now. It was the story of a woman who,
for love's sake, had almost--but not quite--thrown her life away This
seemed to her absurd, for, in the light of her new philosophy, she
thought she knew that the thing called love was non-existent in the
world. And for love's sake to throw one's life away!
It was not until she reached a leafy glade which ran down to the edge
of the cliff that she opened the book. She seated herself on a little
mossy bank with her back against the trunk of a great old tree, and
placed the book on her knees. After she had read for a time she began
to be annoyed. The heroine, firmly persuaded that life without love
was worthless, was calmly arranging to sacrifice as fine prospects as
a woman ever had, so as to enable her to sink to the social position
of her lover, an artisan. The artisan belonged to the new gospel which
teaches that it is only artisans who have a right to live. He was a
wood-engraver, she was the daughter of a hundred earls. As a
wood-engraver--who declined to take large prices for his work--he
considered that she was in an infinitely lower sphere than he: a state
of degradation to be sorrowed over at the best. So she was making the
most complicated arrangements to free herself from the paternity--and
wealth--of the hundred earls.
Miss Truscott became exceedingly annoyed at the picture of devotion
presented by these two, and threw the book from her in disgust.
"What nonsense it all is! How people do exaggerate these things. I
don't believe that love makes the slightest difference in anybody's
life. I do believe that people love a good dinner, or a pretty frock,
or ten thousand pounds a year, but anything else----!" She shrugged
her shoulders with a significant gesture. "There may be weak-minded
people somewhere who believe in love, but even that sort is the love
that loves and rides away. As for love in married life! In the present
state of society, if it did exist it is quite clear to me that it
would be the most uncomfortable thing about the whole affair. Mr. Ely
is a sensible man. He wants a wife, not a woman who loves him. That's
the royal road to marriage!"
As Miss Truscott arrived at this conclusion, she rose from her mossy
seat and shook herself all over, as if she were shaking off the last
remnants of her belief in love.
"Miss Truscott!"
She stood amazed, motionless, with a curious, sudden fascination as
the sound of a voice fell on her ears. It came again.
"Miss Truscott, won't you turn and look at me?"
She turned and looked, and there was a man. She seemed wonderstruck. A
very perceptible change came over her. She became more womanly as she
looked: softer, more feminine. The scornful look passed from her eyes
and face and bearing. She became almost afraid.
"Mr. Summers! Is it you?"
It was a new voice which spoke, a voice which Mr. Ely would never live
to hear. And in it there was a hidden music which was sweeter that the
music of the birds.
"Yes, Miss Truscott, it is I."
He held out his hand. She timidly advanced, and he advanced a step,
and their two hands met. And their eyes met, too. And both of them
were still. Then she gently disengaged her hand, and looked at the
bracken at her feet.
"Some spirit of the wild wood must have led me. I have come straight
up from the station here. It must have been some curious instinct
which told me where you would be found."
"Oh, I am often here--you know that I am often here."
"I know you used to be."
"I think that most of my habits are still unchanged. And where have
you been this great, long time? I thought that you would never come
again."
"Did you think that? Is that true?"
He leaned forward. He spoke in a low, eager, insistent tone, which,
for some cause, made the blood surge about the region of her heart,
and made her conscious that new life was in her veins.
"Oh! I did not think of it at all. Out of sight is out of mind, you
know!"
"And I have been thinking of you all the time. You have been with me
in my dreams both day and night. Your face has stared at me from every
canvas which I touched. You were at the end of every brush. Everything
I tried to paint turned into you. I thought my heart would burst at
the anticipation of meeting you again."
She was silent: for the world she could not have spoken then. This
sceptic maiden, who but a moment back was so incredulous of the
existence of the thing called love, was stricken dumb, conquered by
the magic of the spell woven by this man's tongue and eyes.
"I tried to paint you, and I failed--there are fifty failures in my
room! But one night there came to me the glamour of my lady's eyes. At
the first dawn of day I stood before my canvas, and all at once, as if
it were by witchcraft, I had you there. You shall look at that
portrait one fine day, and you shall know that I have you even when
you are not near. And so, through all the weary time, you have been
there; sleeping and waking I have had you by my side. And you--not
once--have thought of me!"
Silence. Then she raised her head and looked at him.
"I have thought of you--at times."
"What times?"
There was a pause before she spoke, as if each was conscious of a
fascination in the other's glance; eyes continued looking into eyes.
"All times--I think."
"Lady of my heart's desire!"
He still carried the bludgeon which we have seen he had in Mr. Ash's
office. He let it fall upon the ground. He stretched out his two
hands, and, as if unconsciously, she yielded hers to his. So they were
face to face, hands clasped in hands.
"Love lives no longer now. They tell us that it is only in the fables
it is found. Yet I think that they are wrong--nay, it is certain that
I know they are--for I love you better than my life!"
Silence. Even the myriad sounds of nature seemed to be suddenly quite
still. There was no rustling of leaves, no twittering of birds, there
was not even audible the murmuring of the sea. And he went on--
"I pray you tell me--do you love me?"
"Willy!"
That was all she said. Then he stooped and kissed her on the lips. "My
dear!" he said.
Then they were still. He did not even draw her to him. He only held
her hands and looked upon her face. And she regarded him with shy,
proud eyes.
"Why have you been so long?"
"Because I had made myself a promise."
"What promise?"
"That I would earn my prize."
"How could you do that?"
"Ah! how indeed! For, truly, it could not be earned. But when I saw
you first I was the laziest of men. Until that hour I had thrown my
life away. I told myself that until I had done something to redeem the
past, until I had made my mark upon the time, I might not make my
petition for the prize."
"Then it is your fault, my friend."
"If there is a fault, it certainly is mine, for I am full of fault.
But what especial evil have I done?"
She removed her hands from his, and tapping a pebble with her little
foot, she smiled.
"You can never guess."
"Is it so black a crime?"
Suddenly she put her two hands to her face and laughed. But her cheeks
were crimson all the same.
"Oh! what have I done? I shall never dare to tell." She peeped at him
round the edges of her hands. "Shall you be angry with me, Will?"
"Never, if you call me Will!"
"Do you know--- But let me begin at the beginning." She removed her
hands, and putting them behind her back, looked at him shyly, and then
looked down. "Do you know, I thought that you would never come again."
He laughed, and there was something in his laughter made her laugh
too. "So I was not happy--for I loved you all the time." He laughed
again, and, putting his arm about her waist, drew her closer to his
side. "Do you know what happened yesterday?"
"Did the cat drink all the cream?"
"No, worse than that--for we haven't got a cat. Have you forgotten
Pompey, sir? Somebody asked me to be his wife!"
"What! Who?"
"Do you know Mr. Frederic Ely?"
"Good heavens! Was he the man?"
"What man? Willy--surely you do not know!"
"So that was what he was coming into the country for! To think of the
little beggar's impudence. And I wished him luck, by gad!"
He laughed. But she was still.
"Willy! what do you mean? Do you know all about it, then?"
"Why, it was a bargain, sweet. He was to try his luck, and then I
mine. I was so sure of you, you see!"
She released herself from his embrace, and again covering her face
with her hands, she shivered.
"What have you done?"
"It was this way; let me unfold the tale. I went to Mr. Ash and told
him what you know: how all my life was centred in my love for you. He
told me that just before I came another man had brought to him the
self-same tale."
"Surely not quite the same? Surely he did not say that all his life
was centred in his love for me?"
"No, not exactly that! Yet, sweet, why not? For who shall know you and
not love you as his life? But at least another man had come to him who
wished to win your hand--that priceless hand! And he had given him his
word. So it was agreed that he should try his fortune first, and if he
failed--I knew that he would fail!--I should try mine. And if I
won--ah, how I longed to win!--Mr. Ash would crown success with his
consent."
Silence reigned again. They stood a little way apart, he with his eyes
fixed on her face, she with hers upon the ground.
"What have I done?" The words were whispered in an undertone. Then she
looked up at him with a sudden fire in her eyes. "Do you know what I
have done? I have promised this other man to be his wife."
"What! Good God! Lily! what do you mean?"
"He asked me to be his wife. I said I would. I thought that you were
false, you see."
"You thought that I was false! But--it is madness! It is a foolish
dream!"
"Do not look so utterly dismayed. You said that you would not be
vexed, you know. Besides, now it is another thing."
"Another thing! But--Lily, tell me exactly what it is that you have
done."
"I will tell you just exactly what it is that I have done. To begin,
then. You see, I have not been happy--ever since you went away."
"You foolish maid! And yet you wisest of them all."
"I waited--oh, Will, I waited such a weary time! I thought that you
would write, or--or do something that you never did. And at last I
began to think that waiting was in vain. And when I was in the most
hopeless of my hopeless moods--it was no further back than yesterday,
yet it seemed years ago!"--she put forth her hand and touched his arm,
and he laughed beneath his breath--"a letter came from Mr. Ash. He
said that Mr. Ely was coming here. I showed the letter to my aunt. She
seemed to take it for granted that I would do exactly what my guardian
wished me to--as though it were a decree that was written in the
skies. So when he came, and asked me to be his wife--just out of spite
and wickedness I said I would. He never asked me if I loved him; he
never pretended even to love me. It was just a bargain: I was to be
his wife."
"My little love! What is it you have done? And now, pray, what is it
that you mean to do?"
"I shall write and tell him I have changed my mind."
"Changed your mind! What do you suppose that he will say to that?"
"Why, what can he say? It is like a commercial treaty which is in the
air. There are some of the clauses to which I am unable to agree. So I
withdraw from the negotiations and refuse to sign."
"One thing is sure: you cannot be his wife."
"Will, I am just like you! I love you better than my life!"
"Sweetheart! Then I have won the prize! I thought that I had won the
prize! Will you forgive me my presumption in that I thought that I had
won the prize?"
"You should not have kept me so long waiting. It is your fault that I
have sinned."
"You shall not have cause again to esteem me false; and observe, fair
maid, I had a higher estimate of you."
"Willy! That is unkind!"
Then she turned her face up to his, and when he saw that sweet face
upturned and those sweet eyes, what could he do but kiss, not once nor
twice, but many times, those sweetest lips? And by this time the two
were close together. He had his arm about her waist and pressed her to
his breast.
"Do you know that, from my point of view, fair queen, this was worth
waiting for?"
"And do you know, sir, that is my point of view as well?"
Then there was silence, and they feasted on the love that was in each
other's eyes.
"Lily! Mr. Summers!"
And while they were still engaged in this delectable pursuit, all at
once their names were spoken from behind; and turning, they saw that
Mrs. Clive was standing in the shadow of the trees.
CHAPTER VII
MRS. CLIVE--AND POMPEY
Mrs. Clive had the faithful Pompey in her arms. That faithful animal
was out for exercise, and exercise meant as a rule, to him, being
carried all the way. His mistress stared at the lovers, and the
lovers, taken aback for a moment, stared at her.
"Can I believe my eyes!"
In her amazement she let the faithful creature fall. Pompey gave a
dismal groan. He did not belong to the order of dogs who can fall with
comfort to themselves. Where he fell he lay. In the agitation of her
feelings Mrs. Clive did not notice the quadruped's distress.
"Lily! Is it possible it is my niece!"
Quite possible, it seemed, and not at all surprising, either.
Recovering from the first momentary shock, Miss Truscott was the most
charming niece alive. Removing herself from the gentleman's near
neighbourhood, she inclined her body and gave a little graceful
curtsey--a prettier curtsey never yet was seen.
"Yes, aunty, it is I." Then she drew herself up straight. "You always
said I was your niece." Then she turned to the gentleman. "Willy,
don't you know my aunt?"
Mr. Summers laughed. The old lady bridled, but the gentleman, not at
all abashed, took off his hat and advanced to her with outstretched
hand.
"Mrs. Clive, it is twelve months since I saw you. I am afraid you have
forgotten me."
But he was mistaken if he thought that she would take his hand. There
never was an old lady with a stiffer mien, and she was at her stiffest
now. She had her mittened hands down by her sides, and looked him in
the face as though she could not see that he was there.
"I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir."
This was a fib, but there are occasions when fibs must be expected.
"My name is Summers--William Summers. I thought I heard you just now
mention me by name. And I, at least, have not forgotten the pleasant
hours I spent with you last year."
"Lily, I must trouble you to come with me."
That was the only answer he received to his small compliment. With her
most unbending air the old lady turned to go. But the impression she
desired to convey was in a measure spoiled. In sweeping round--her
action could only be described as sweeping round--she kicked the
faithful Pompey; and when the faithful Pompey received that kick he
raised a dreadful howl, and that dreadful howl awoke the echoes far
and wide. In an instant Mr. Summers had the ill-used creature in his
arms.
"Poor Pompey! I am afraid you have hurt him, Mrs. Clive. How well he
looks! See, Mrs. Clive, he seems in pain. I'm afraid you must have
kicked him in the side, and in his condition that is rather a serious
thing. Don't you know me, Pompey?"
It appeared that Pompey did, for, in a feeble kind of way, he put out
his tongue and licked his protector's nose. Such a sight could not but
touch the lady's heart. Still, of course, it was out of the question
that she should unbend.
"I must trouble you, sir, to let me have my dog."
"Permit me to carry him for you towards the house. I'm sure he is in
pain--see how still he is."
If stillness were a sign of pain, then the faithful beast must have
been pretty constantly in pain, for motion--or emotion--of any sort
was not in Pompey's line. Mrs. Clive would have grasped the subterfuge
if she had been left alone, but her perfidious niece came to the
gentleman's aid. She began to stroke and caress the faithful beast.
"Poor Pompey! Poor 'ickle Pompey, then! I hope he has not broken any
bones. Do you think it is his ribs?"
Miss Truscott's back was turned to Mrs. Clive. If the aunt had seen
the way in which her niece glanced under her long eyelashes at the
gentleman in front of her she would have seized the animal and marched
away.
"I scarcely think it is his ribs."
It was not probable, considering how they were swathed in fat.
"Perhaps it is his leg."
"I hope that it is not."
Mr. Summers threw such a tone of doubt into this expression of his
hopes that Mrs. Clive's heart gave quite a jump. Her Pompey's leg!
Broken! And by her! But she was not by any means going to give in yet.
There was the bearded gentleman holding the wheezing quadruped as
though it were the most precious thing on earth, and there was her
niece very close in front of him. All her sense of moral rectitude was
up in arms.
"Lily! I am surprised at you!"
"Surprised at me, aunty! Why? Because you have broken Pompey's leg? I
didn't do it, it was you. Supposing he should die? You know what a
delicate constitution he always had."
"It is quite possible the injury is less serious than we suppose";
this the gentleman suggested in a consoling kind of way,
"though"--here some one gave the dog a pinch, and the dog gave
expression to his feelings in a howl--"though decidedly he seems in
pain. I think that I had better go on with him straight to the house."
"Lily! I insist upon your coming here."
Miss Truscott did as she was told. With meek face and downcast eyes
she fell in decorously by the old lady's side. Mr. Summers, ignored
and snubbed, but still triumphant, bore Pompey away in front.
"Lily, what is the meaning of all this?"
"I think you must have let Pompey fall, and then have kicked him when
he fell. I cannot see how you can have done it; you are so careful as
a rule."
"I am not speaking about the dog; you know that very well. I am
speaking of the--the extraordinary scene I interrupted."
"Willy was telling me that he loved me."
"Willy was telling you what! And who is Willy, pray?"
"Willy is Mr. Summers's Christian name."
"Lily, are you stark, raving mad? Have you forgotten what happened
yesterday? Are you aware that it is not four-and-twenty hours since
you promised Mr. Frederic Ely to be his wife?"
"Yes, auntie; but I have changed my mind."
"You have--what?"
"I have changed my mind."
Mrs. Clive was so overcome that she sank down on a grassy bank which
they were passing. It was a thing she had not done for years. She was
always under the impression that the grass was damp--even when it
burned you as you touched it with the palm of your hand.
"Lily, either you are mad or I must be. Changed your mind! Do you
think that in such a matter it is possible for a woman to change her
mind?"
"It would seem to be, wouldn't it? Especially when you look at me."
"You treat it as a jest! The most astounding behaviour I ever heard
of! I don't wish to forget myself if you have done so; I simply call
it the most astounding behaviour I ever heard of! A niece of mine!"
"Perhaps that's it. I--I have such a remarkable aunt."
The temptation was irresistible, but the effect was serious. For some
moments Mrs. Clive sat speechless with indignation. Then she rose from
the mossy bank and walked away without a word. Left behind, Miss
Truscott covered her face with her hands and laughed--a little
guiltily, it seemed. Then she went after. So the march to the house
resolved itself into a procession of three.
CHAPTER VIII
MR. ROSENBAUM'S SIX DAUGHTERS
In the meantime Mr. Ely was dreaming of his love. It sounds
contradictory at first, bearing in mind that he was not a man of
sentiment; but the fact was that in his case absence made the heart
grow distinctly fonder. By the time he reached Ryde Miss Truscott
occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of all else; he never even
troubled himself about the purchase of a paper--which was fortunate,
for at that hour none had yet arrived from town, and to him the local
prints were loathsome. All the way on the boat he dreamed--yes,
literally dreamed--of the girl he left behind him. More than once,
incredible though it may appear, he sighed.
"She don't care for me a snap, not a single rap, by Jove she don't!"
He sighed when he said this, for, for some occult reason, the idea did
not seem to amuse him so much as it had done last night.
"I don't know why she shouldn't, though. Perhaps she thought I didn't
want her. More I didn't then, though I don't see why she shouldn't if
I did. I know how to make a girl like me as well as any man--look at
the Rosenbaums!"
He sighed again. It was "look at the Rosenbaums," indeed! When he
thought of those six young women, with their well-developed noses and
the fringe of hair upon their upper lips, and of their twice-hammered
father, and then of Miss Truscott, that vision of a fair woman, with
her noble bearing, her lovely face, and her wondrous eyes, the
contrast went deeply home. He felt that he was a lucky--and yet not
altogether a lucky--man.
"She's going to be my wife, that's one thing, anyhow."
The Isle of Wight is a great place for honeymoons. It lends itself
naturally to couples in a certain phase of their existence. Such a
couple were on board the boat with Mr. Ely. Their demeanour was tender
towards each other.
"Couple of idiots!" said Mr. Ely to himself as he observed this pair;
"it makes a man feel ill to look at them!"
She was a pretty girl, and he was not an ugly man; she hung upon his
arm and looked into his eyes. It was plain the honeymoon was not yet
done for them. In spite of his disgust, Mr. Ely found himself
thinking, almost unconsciously, of another figure and of another pair
of eyes--of that other figure hanging upon his arm, and of that other
pair of eyes looking into his. He sighed again.
"She doesn't care for me a snap, by Jove!"
Instead of amusing him, it seemed that this reflection began to give
him pain. The little man looked quite disconsolate.
"I'll make her, though! I will! If--if it costs me a thousand pounds!"
He had been on the point of stating the cost he was willing to incur
at a much higher sum than this. He had been on the very verge of
saying that he would make her care for him if it cost him every penny
he had. But prudence stepped in, and he limited the amount to be
squandered to a thousand pounds, which was not so bad for a man who
did not believe in sentiment. But a singular change had come over him
between Shanklin and Stokes Bay.
The change was emphasised by a little encounter which he had with a
friend in the train. He had taken his seat in the corner of a
carriage, when the door was darkened by a big, stout man, who was all
hair and whiskers and gorgeous apparel.
"What, Ely! My boy, is it bossible it is you!
"Rosenbaum! What the devil brings you here?"
"Ah! what the teffel is it brings you?"
Mr. Rosenbaum spoke with a decidedly German accent. He settled himself
in the seat in front of Mr. Ely, and beamed at him, all jewellery and
smiles. It was as though some one had applied a cold douche to the
small of Mr. Ely's back. He was dreaming of the sweetest eyes, and his
too-friendly six-daughtered friend--the man who had been hammered
twice!--appeared upon the scene. It was a shock. But Mr. Rosenbaum
seemed beamingly unconscious of anything of the kind. The train
started, and he began a conversation--which rather hung fire, by the
way.
"It is some time since we have seen you in Queen's Gate."
Queen's Gate was where Mr. Rosenbaum resided. After each
"hammering"--mysterious process!--he had moved into a larger house. It
had been first Earl's Court, then Cromwell Road, and now Queen's Gate.
"Been so much engaged."
Mr. Rosenbaum was smoking a huge cigar, and kept puffing out great
clouds of smoke. Mr. Ely was engaged on a smaller article, which
scarcely produced any smoke at all. They had the compartment to
themselves; Mr. Ely would rather have seen it full. He knew his
friend.
"Miriam has missed you."
Miriam was the eldest of
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