Chapter Twenty.
The Chill Hand.
Was the message from her lover or from that villain Tattersett?
Her refusal piqued me, and I was half inclined to suggest that it was from the one or the other. Still, in this marvellous maze of mystery, I saw that it was not at all a judicious proceeding to show my hand. What I already knew was of value to me in my efforts to piece together this bewildering puzzle.
The more I reflected the more convinced I became that the visitor in black was none other than the dreaded woman whose threatened vengeance was known to be imminent—La Gioia the mysterious.
“The visitor did not touch you?” I asked. “Neither did she give you any note?”
“No; the message was verbal. I went once to the library and obtained a sheet of note-paper, but on returning found it to be soiled. Therefore I went out again to get a second, sheet, and it was then that I felt a sudden grip, just as though an icy breath had touched me. In an instant I went cold all over, and my limbs became so benumbed that I could not feel them.”
“You did not suspect this woman of producing this effect upon you?” Hoefer asked, grunting dubiously.
“Certainly not. How could she?”
“But her actions afterwards, in switching off the light and stealing out, were suspicious.”
“That’s so; but how do you account for your own seizure nearly two hours after her departure?”
“Ach!” he cried; “it is extraordinary—that is all we can say.”
“The room is nothing less than a death-trap,” I remarked. “And yet the baneful influence is a mysterious one. I wish you could tell us the name of the sender of the message, Miss Wynd. It would materially assist us in our researches.”
“I tell you that it was a friend who could have no object whatever in making any attack upon my life,” she answered, ambiguously.
“But this woman,” I continued. “Are you certain that you do not know her—that you have never met her before?”
“Quite certain,” she responded without hesitation. “She was an utter stranger.”
I exchanged glances with Hoefer. The mystery was still inscrutable.
Again we all four went to the door of the room of mystery, and Hoefer, still grunting in dissatisfaction, declared his intention to re-enter the place. Seen from the hall there was certainly nothing about the apartment to excite suspicion. It was bright and comfortable, with handsome substantial furniture, sage-green hangings, and a thick Turkey carpet into which one’s feet sank noiselessly.
“It is a risk!” exclaimed her ladyship, when Hoefer made the announcement. “Death lurks in that place. Let us close and lock it.”
“Ach! no, madame,” he responded. “It is no risk now that we have the prophylactic.” And, turning to me, he handed me a little of the last injection which he had given to Beryl, together with the phial of ether and the syringe.
“Use this, if necessary,” he said, briefly, and then leaving us, he crossed the threshold and examined every nook of the room.
The window was still open, but he closed and fastened it. Upon a little writing-table in the corner lay the soiled sheet of note-paper that Beryl had obtained on her first visit to the library, thus proving the truth of her story. The door swung to, as before, and after about five minutes he again emerged.
Scarcely had he crossed the threshold when he gave vent to a loud cry.
“Gott!” he gasped. “The injection—quick!”
He had again been seized. The unseen hand of Death was upon him. Truly, it was an uncanny mystery.
Without a second’s delay I filled the syringe, rubbed the flesh with ether, and then ran the needle beneath the skin. The effect was almost instantaneous. The sudden paralysis was arrested, and the muscles reanimated in a manner most marvellous. One fact was, therefore, plain: Hoefer had discovered the proper treatment, even if the cause of the extraordinary seizure remained unknown.
He stood for a few moments motionless, but at length declaring himself better, said—
“The thing is an absolute enigma; I can discern no cause whatever for it. There would seem to be some hidden influence at work, but of its nature we can discover absolutely nothing. The attack does not occur until one emerges here into the hall.”
“Can it be out here?” I suggested, whereat both my companions turned pale with fright.
Certainly the situation was as weird and uncanny as any in which I have ever found myself. An unseen influence is always mysterious, and this chill touch of the hand of death that we had all experienced was actually appalling.
We held council, and decided that the room should be closed and locked to prevent any of the servants entering there. Our conversation had undoubtedly been overheard by them, and Hoefer was anxious that the place should remain undisturbed so that he might make further investigations, which he promised to do on the following day.
Then we entered the dining-room together, partook of some wine which her ladyship offered us, and left the house in company—not, however, before I had promised to call again on the morrow and visit my patient.
“Now, Hoefer, what is your candid opinion?” I asked my companion as we stood on the kerb, opposite the Marble Arch, awaiting the belated omnibus to take him back to Bloomsbury.
“I don’t like it, my dear frient,” he answered dubiously; “I don’t like it.” And, shaking my hand, he entered the last Holborn ’bus without further word.
On foot I returned to Bayswater utterly confounded by the curious events of the evening. By Hoefer’s serious expression and preoccupied manner, I saw that the influence within or without that room of mystery was to him utterly bewildering. He had spent his life in the study of micro-organisms, and knew more of staphylococci, streptococci, and pneumococci than any other living man, while as a toxicologist he was acknowledged, even by his clever compatriots in Germany, as the greatest of them all. He had searched out many of the secrets of Nature, and I had myself at times witnessed certain, of his experiments, which were little short of marvellous. It was, therefore, gratifying that I had enlisted his aid in solving this most difficult problem.
Yet, as I lay awake that night, reflecting deeply upon the curious situation, I could not arrest my thoughts from turning back to the tragedy at Whitton and the omission of those two names from the list of visitors furnished to the police. That her ladyship was a bosom friend of Mrs Chetwode’s was quite plain, and that she was present, together with Beryl, earlier in the day, I had myself seen. Somehow, I could not get rid of the conviction that Sir Henry’s wife, the woman who had taken this secret journey from Atworth to London to have a clandestine interview with some person whom she declined to name, knew the truth regarding the Colonel’s death.
I was plunged into a veritable sea of perplexity.
If I could but discover the identity of La Gioia! That name rang in my ears, sleeping or waking. La Gioia! La Gioia! Ever La Gioia!
Beryl held her in abject dread. Of that I knew from those words of here I had overheard at Whitton. She had declared that she would commit suicide rather than face her vengeance. What had rendered my adored one so desperate?
As I sat over my lonely breakfast on the following morning, there being already a couple of patients in the waiting-room—clerks who had come for “doctors’ certificates” to enable them to enjoy a day’s repose—the servant brought in the letters, among them being one for me which had been forwarded from Shrewsbury by my mother.
The superscription was in a formal hand, and, on reading it, I was surprised to find that it was from a firm of solicitors in Bedford Row, stating that my uncle George, a cotton-spinner in Bury, had died, leaving a will by which I was to receive the sum of one thousand pounds as a legacy. I read the letter, time after time, scarcely able to believe the good news.
But an hour later, when I sat in the dingy office in Bedford Row, and my uncle’s solicitor read a copy of the will to me, I saw that it was a reality—a fact which was indeed, proved by the cheque for fifty pounds which he handed me for my immediate use. I drove to the Joint Stock Bank in Chancery Lane, cashed the draft, and returned to Bayswater with five ten-pound notes in my pocket. From a state of penury I had, within that single hour, become possessed of funds. True, I had always had expectations from that quarter; but I had, like millions of other men, never before been possessor of a thousand pounds. In a week or two the money would be placed to my credit. To a man with only half a crown in his pocket a thousand pounds appears a fortune.
I counted the crisp new notes in the privacy of the doctor’s sitting-room, then, locking three of them in my portmanteau, took a cab down to Rowan Road to receive Bob’s congratulations. He was delighted. He sent Mrs Bishop out for a bottle of the best champagne procurable in the neighbourhood, and we drank merrily to my future success. Then, while smoking a cigarette over what remained of the wine, I related to him my strange adventure of the previous night.
He sat listening to my story open-mouthed. Until I had concluded, he uttered no word. Then gravely he exclaimed—
“The affair grows more and more amazing. But now, look here, Dick! Why don’t you take my advice, and drop the affair altogether?”
“Drop it? What do you mean? Remember Beryl!”
“I know,” he answered. “But I can’t help feeling that association with those people is dangerous. They’re a queer lot—a devilishly queer lot!”
“Of course they’re a queer lot,” I said; “but I can’t leave her to their mercy. She’s in deadly peril of her life; they intend to kill her.”
A grave expression was on his face. “Do you think that last night’s curious phenomenon was actually an attempt to kill her?” he inquired.
“Without a doubt.”
“Then, if so, how was it that you all experienced similar symptoms? What’s old Hoefer’s theory?”
“He has none.”
“He never has—or, at least, he pretends that he hasn’t; he keeps all his discoveries to himself. That’s why he has always refused to write any books. When he lectures he’s always careful to keep his secrets to himself.”
“Yes; he’s a queer old boy,” I remarked, for his eccentricities were many, and had often caused us much amusement at Guy’s.
“I only wish, Dick, that you’d try to forget all about this tangled affair,” Bob said earnestly. “You’re worrying yourself to death all to no purpose.”
“Why ‘all to no purpose’?” I echoed. “I am patient, and I shall discover something one day.”
“No,” he said confidently. “You’ll never discover anything—mark my words.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because you are watched far too closely.”
“Watched!” I cried in surprise. “Who watches me?”
“Several persons. Among them your wife herself.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw her in this street, on the evening before last, evidently in search of you. She passed several times, and glanced across here. Yet she tells you—or, rather, her cousin tells you—that they were not in London at that time.”
“Are you certain?”
“Absolutely.”
“But how did you recognise her?” I demanded eagerly. “Why, you’ve never seen her!”
He started quickly. By the expression on his face I recognised in an instant, that he had inadvertently betrayed to me the fact that they were not strangers.
He knew her! And he had tried to dissuade me from following up the slight clue I had obtained. With what motive? This man, whom I had believed was my friend, had played me false.
The discovery was as a blow that staggered me.
Chapter Twenty One.
Two Hearts.
The truth was plain. Bob Raymond, the man whom I had believed to be my friend, had endeavoured to dissuade me from following up the clue I had obtained, fearing lest I should discover the whole of the strange conspiracy.
I pressed him for an explanation of how he had been able to recognise her, but with marvellous tact he answered—
“Oh, I recognised her from your descriptions, you know.”
Frankly I did not believe it. Whether he had a personal acquaintance with her or not, it was nevertheless manifest that she was actually in London at a time when she was believed to be at Atworth; and further, that not knowing of my change of address, had been in search of me.
Why had she not rung the bell and inquired? There seemed but a single answer to that question; because she feared to meet Bob!
I scented suspicion. In our conversation that followed I detected, on his part, a strenuous determination to evade any explanation. That he was actually acquainted with Beryl was apparent. Perhaps, even, he knew the truth regarding my strange marriage, and, from motives of his own, refused to tell me.
Anger arose within me, but I preserved a diplomatic calm, striving to worm his secret from him. Either he would not or could not tell me anything. In that hour of affluence, after all the penury of past years, I was perhaps a trifle egotistical, as men who suddenly receive an unexpected legacy are apt to be. Money has a greater influence upon our temperament or disposition than even love. A few paltry pounds can transform this earth of ours from a hell into a paradise.
I drained my glass, flung my cigarette end into the empty grate, and left my friend with a rather abrupt farewell.
“You’ll let me know if you elicit anything further?” he urged.
“Of course,” I answered, although such was not my intention. Then I went forth walking out to the Hammersmith Road.
The noon was stifling—one of those hot, close, oven-cast days of the London summer—when I was shown into the drawing-room of Gloucester Square, and, after the lapse of a few minutes, my love came forward gladly to meet me.
“It’s awfully kind of you to call, Doctor,” she exclaimed, offering her thin little hand—that hand that on the previous night had been so stiff and cold. “Nora is out, but I expect her in again every moment. She’s gone to the Stores to order things to be sent up to Atworth.”
“And how do you feel?” I inquired, as she seated herself upon a low silken lounge-chair and stretched out her tiny foot, neat in its patent leather slipper with large steel buckle.
She looked cool and fresh in a gown of white muslin relieved with a dash of Nile-green silk at the throat and waist.
“Oh, I am so much better,” she declared. “Except for a slight headache, I feel no ill effects of last night’s extraordinary attack.”
I asked permission to feel her pulse, and found it beating with the regularity of a person in normal health.
As I held her white wrist, her deep clear eyes met mine. In her pure white clinging drapery, with her gold-brown hair making the half-darkened room bright, with her red lips parted in a tender and solemn smile, with something like a halo about her of youth and ardour, she was a vision so entrancing that, as I gazed at her, my heart grew heavy with an aching consciousness of her perfection. And yet she was actually my wife!
I stammered satisfaction that she had recovered so entirely from the strange seizure, and her eyes opened widely, as though in wonder at my inarticulate words.
“Yes,” she said, “the affair was most extraordinary. I cannot imagine what horrid mystery is concealed within that room.”
“Nor I,” I responded. “Has Doctor Hoefer been here yet?”
“Oh yes,” she laughed; “he came at nine o’clock, opened the room, entered, and was seized again, but only slightly. He used the same drug as last night, and quickly recovered. For about an hour he remained, and then left. He’s such a queer old fellow,” she added, with a laugh; “I don’t think he uttered a dozen words during the whole time.”
“No,” I said; “his habit is to give vent to those expressive grunts. When interested his mind seems always so actively centred upon the matter under investigation that to speak is an effort. But tell me,” I urged, glancing into those pure, honest eyes, “have you ever experienced before such a seizure as that last night?”
She turned rather pale, I thought: this direct question seemed not easy to answer.
“I was ill once,” she responded, with hesitation, yet with sweet, simple, girlish tenderness. “One day, some little time ago, I suddenly fell unconscious, and seemed to dream all sorts of absurd and grotesque things.”
Did she refer to the fateful day of our marriage?
“Were you quite unconscious on that occasion?” I asked quickly, “or were you aware, in a hazy manner, of what was going on around you, as you were last night?”
A wild hope sprang up in my heart. Was it possible that she would reveal to me her secret?
“I think,” she answered, “that my condition then was very similar to that of last night; I recollect quite well being unable to move my limbs or to lift a finger. Every muscle seemed paralysed, while, at the same time, I went as cold as ice, just as though I were frozen to death. Indeed, a horrible dread took possession of me lest my friends should allow me to be buried alive.”
“You were in a kind of cataleptic state,” I remarked. “Who were these friends?”
Her great eyes were lifted. They were full of depths unfathomable even to my intense love.
“I was practically unconscious, therefore I do not know who was present; I only heard voices.”
“Of whom?”
“Of men talking.”
“Could you not recognise them?”
“No,” she answered, in a low tone; “they were dream-voices, strange and weird—sounding afar off.”
“What did they say?”
“I cannot tell, only I recollect that I thought I was in church; I had a curious dream.”
Again she hesitated. Her voice had suddenly fallen so that I could scarcely make out the sound of the last word.
“What did you dream? The vagaries of the brain sometimes give us a clue to the nature of such seizures.”
“I dreamed that I was wedded,” she responded, in a low, unnatural voice.
The next instant she seemed to realise what she had said. With a start of terror she drew herself away from me.
“Wedded? To whom?”
“I do not know,” she replied, with a queer laugh. “Of course, it was a mere dream; I saw no one.”
“But you heard voices?”
“They were so distorted as to be indistinguishable,” she replied readily.
“Are you absolutely certain that the marriage was only a dream?” I asked, looking her straight in the face.
A flash of indignant surprise passed across her features, now pale as marble; her lips were slightly parted, her large full eyes were fixed upon me steadfastly, and her fingers pressed themselves into the palms of her hands.
“I don’t understand you, Doctor!” she said at length, after a pause of the most awkward duration. “Of course I am not married?”
“I regret if you take my words as an insinuation,” I said hastily.
“It was a kind of dream,” she declared. “Indeed, I think that I was in a sort of delirium and imagined it all, for when I recovered completely I found myself here, in my own room, with Nora at my side.”
“And where were you when you were taken ill?”
“In the house of a friend.”
“May I not know the name?” I inquired.
“It is a name with which you are not acquainted,” she assured me. “The house at which I was visiting was in Queen’s-gate Gardens.”
Queen’s-gate Gardens! Then she was telling the truth!
“And you have no knowledge of how you came to be back here in your cousin’s house?”
“None whatever. I tell you that I was entirely unconscious.”
“And you are certain that the symptoms on that day were the same as those which we all experienced last night? You felt frozen to death?”
“Yes,” she responded, lying back in her chair, sighing rather wearily and passing her hand across her aching brow.
There was a deep silence. We could hear the throbbing of each other’s heart. At last she looked up tremblingly, with an expression of undissembled pain, saying—
“The truth is, Doctor, it was an absolute mystery, just as were the events of last night—a mystery which is driving me to desperation.”
“It’s not the mystery that troubles you,” I said, in a low earnest voice, “but the recollection of that dream-marriage, is it not?”
“Exactly,” she faltered.
“You do not recollect the name announced by the clergyman, as that of your husband?” I inquired, eagerly.
“I heard it but once, and it was strange and unusual; the droning voice stumbled over it indistinctly, therefore I could not catch it.”
She was in ignorance that she was my bride. Her heart was beating rapidly, the lace on her bosom trembled as she slowly lifted her eyes to mine. Could she ever love me?
A thought of young Chetwode stung me to the quick. He was my rival, yet I was already her husband.
“I have been foolish to tell you all this,” she said presently, with a nervous laugh. “It was only a dream—a dream so vivid that I have sometimes thought it was actual truth.”
Her speech was the softest murmur, and the beautiful face, nearer to mine than it had been before, was looking at me with beseeching tenderness. Then her eyes dropped, a martyr pain passed over her face, her small hands sought each other as though they must hold something, the fingers clasped themselves, and her head drooped.
“I am glad you have told me,” I said. “The incident is certainly curious, judged in connexion with the unusual phenomena of last night.”
“Yes, but I ought not to have told you,” she said slowly. “Nora will be very angry.”
“Why?”
“Because she made me promise to tell absolutely no one,” she answered, with a faint sharpness in her voice. There were loss and woe in those words of hers.
“What motive had she in preserving your secret?” I asked, surprised. “Surely she is—”
My love interrupted me.
“No, do not let us discuss her motives or her actions; she is my friend. Let us not talk of the affair any more, I beg of you.”
She was pale as death, and it seemed as though a tremor ran through all her limbs.
“But am I not also your friend, Miss Wynd?” I asked in deep seriousness.
“I—I hope you are.”
Her voice was timid, troubled; but her sincere eyes again lifted themselves to mine.
“I assure you that I am,” I declared. “If you will but give me your permission I will continue, with Hoefer, to seek a solution of this puzzling problem.”
“It is so uncanny,” she said. “To me it surpasses belief.”
“I admit that. At present, to leave that room is to invite death. We must, therefore, make active researches to ascertain the truth. We must find your strange visitor in black.”
“Find her?” she gasped. “You could never do that.”
“Why not? She is not supernatural; she lives and is in hiding somewhere, that’s evident.”
“And you would find her, and seek from her the truth?”
“Certainly.”
She shut her lips tight and sat motionless, looking at me. Then at last she said, shuddering—
“No. Not that.”
“Then you know this woman—or at least you guess her identity,” I said in a low voice.
She gazed at me with parted lips.
“I have already told you that I do not know her,” was her firm response.
“Then what do you fear?” I demanded.
Again she was silent. Whatever potential complicity had lurked in her heart, my words brought her only immeasurable dismay.
“I dread such an action for your own sake,” she faltered.
“Then I will remain till your cousin comes, and ask her what it is.”
“Ask her?”
Chapter Twenty Two.
A Savant at Home.
“Why should I not ask your cousin?” I inquired earnestly. “I see by your manner that you are in sore need of a friend, and yet you will not allow me to act as such.”
“Not allow you!” she echoed. “You are my friend. Were it not for you I should have died last night.”
“Your recovery was due to Hoefer, not to myself,” I declared.
I longed to speak to her of her visit to Whitton and of her relations with the Major, but dare not. By so doing I should only expose myself as an eavesdropper and a spy. Therefore, I was held to silence.
My thoughts wandered back to that fateful night when I was called to the house with the grey front in Queen’s-gate Gardens. That house, she had told me, was the home of “a friend.” I remembered how, after our marriage, I had seen her lying there as one dead, and knew that she had fallen the victim of some foul and deep conspiracy. Who was that man who had called himself Wyndham Wynd? An associate of the Major’s, who was careful in the concealment of his identity. The manner in which the plot had been arranged was both amazing in its ingenuity and bewildering in its complications.
And lounging before me there in the low silken chair, her small mouth slightly parted, displaying an even set of pearly teeth, sat the victim—the woman who was unconsciously my wedded wife.
Her attitude towards me was plainly one of fear lest I should discover her secret. It was evident that she now regretted having told me of that strange, dreamlike scene which was photographed so indelibly upon her memory, that incident so vivid that she vaguely believed she had been actually wedded.
“So you are returning to Atworth again?” I asked, for want of something better to say.
“I believe that is Nora’s intention,” she responded quickly, with a slight sigh of relief at the change in our conversation.
“Have you many visitors there?”
“Oh, about fifteen—all rather jolly people. It’s such a charming place. Nora must ask you down there.”
“I should be delighted,” I said.
Now that I had money in my pocket, and was no longer compelled to toil for the bare necessities of life, I was eager to get away from the heat and dust of the London August. This suggestion of hers was to me doubly welcome too, for as a visitor at Atworth I should be always beside her. That she was in peril was evident, and my place was near her.
On the other hand, however, I distrusted her ladyship. She had, at the first moment of our meeting, shown herself to be artificial and an admirable actress. Indeed, had she not, for purposes known best to herself, endeavoured to start a flirtation with me? Her character everywhere was that of a smart woman—popular in society, and noted for the success of her various entertainments during the season; but women of her stamp never commended themselves to me. Doctors, truth to tell, see rather too much of the reverse of the medal—especially in social London.
“When did you return from Wiltshire?” I inquired, determined to clear up one point.
“The day before yesterday,” she responded.
“In the evening?”
“No, in the morning.”
Then her ladyship had lied to me, for she had said they had arrived in London on the morning of the day when the unknown woman in black had called. Beryl had told the truth, and her words were proved by the statement of Bob Raymond that he had seen her pass along Rowan Road.
Were they acquaintances? As I reflected upon that problem one fact alone stood out above all others. If I had been unknown to Wynd and that scoundrel Tattersett, how was it that they were enabled to give every detail regarding myself in their application for the marriage licence? How, indeed, did they know that I was acting as Bob’s locum tenens? Or how was the Tempter so well aware of my penury?
No. Now that my friend had betrayed himself, I felt convinced that he knew something of the extraordinary plot in which I had become so hopelessly involved.
“The day before yesterday,” I said, looking her straight in the face, “you came to Hammersmith to try to find me.”
She started quickly, but in an instant recovered herself.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I walked through Rowan Road, expecting to find your plate on one of the doors, but could not.”
“I have no plate,” I answered. “When I lived there I was assistant to my friend. Doctor Raymond.”
“Raymond!” she exclaimed. “Oh yes, I remember I saw his name; but I was looking for yours.”
“You wished to see me?”
“Yes; I was not well,” she faltered.
“But your cousin knew that I had lived with Raymond. Did you not ask her?”
“No,” she answered, “it never occurred to me to do so.”
Rather a lame response, I thought.
“But last night she found me quite easily. She called upon Doctor Raymond, who gave her my new address.” And, continuing, I told her of my temporary abode.
“I know,” she replied.
“Have you ever met my friend Raymond?” I inquired with an air of affected carelessness.
“Not to my knowledge,” she answered quite frankly.
“How long ago did Hoefer leave?” I asked.
“About an hour, I think. He has locked the door of the morning-room and taken the key with him,” she added, laughing.
She presented a pretty picture, indeed, in that half-darkened room, leaning back gracefully and smiling upon me.
“He announced no fresh discovery?”
“He spoke scarcely a dozen words.”
“But this mystery is a very disagreeable one for you who live here. I presume that you live with your cousin always?”
“Yes,” she responded. “After my father’s death, some years ago, I came here to live with her.”
So her father was dead! The Tempter was not, as I had all along suspected, her father.
I longed to take her in my arms and tell her the truth, that I was actually her husband and that I loved her. Yet, how could I? The mystery was so complicated, and so full of inscrutable points, that to make any such declaration must only fill her with fear of myself.
We chatted on while I feasted my eyes upon her wondrous beauty. Had she, I asked myself, ever seen young Chetwode since her return to London? Did she really love him, or was he merely the harmless but necessary admirer which every girl attracts towards herself as a sort of natural instinct? The thought of him caused a vivid recollection of that night in Whitton Park to arise within me.
Where was Tattersett—the man who had laughed at her when she had declared her intention of escaping him by suicide? Who was he? What was he?
It occurred to me, now that I had learned some potent facts from her own lips, that my next course should be to find this man and investigate his past. By doing so I might elucidate the problem.
Her ladyship, with a cry of welcome upon her lips, entered the room and sank, hot and fatigued, into a cosy armchair.
“London is simply unbearable!” she declared. “It’s ever so many degrees hotter than at Atworth, and in the Stores it is awfully stuffy. In the provision department butter, bacon, and things seem all melting away.”
“You’ll be glad to get back again to Wiltshire,” I laughed.
“Very. We shall go by the night-mail to-morrow,” she answered. “Why don’t you come up and visit us, Doctor? My husband would be charmed to meet you I’m sure.”
“That’s just what I’ve been saying, dear,” exclaimed Beryl. “Do persuade Doctor Colkirk to come.”
“I am sure you are both very kind,” I replied, “but at present I am in practice.”
“You can surely take a holiday,” urged Beryl. “Do come. We would try to make it pleasant for you.”
Her persuasion decided me, and, after some further pressing on the part of her ladyship, I accepted the invitation with secret satisfaction, promising to leave in the course of a week or ten days.
Then we fell to discussing the curious phenomena of the previous night, until, having again exhausted the subject, I rose to take my leave.
“Good-bye, Doctor Colkirk,” Beryl said, looking into my eyes as I held her small hand. “I hope we shall soon meet down in Wiltshire, and, when we do, let us forget all the mystery of yesterday.”
“I suppose you have given Hoefer permission to visit, the room when he wishes to pursue his investigations?” I said, turning to her ladyship.
“Of course. The house is entirely at his disposal. One does not care to have a death-trap in one’s own house.”
“He will do his best—of that I feel quite sure,” I said.
And then again promising to visit her soon, I shook her hand, bade them both adieu, and with a last look at the frail, graceful woman I loved, went out into the hot, dusty street.
In order to celebrate my sudden accession to wealth I lunched well at Simpson’s, and then took a hansom to old Hoefer’s dismal rooms in. Bloomsbury. To me, so gloomy and severe is that once-aristocratic district that, in my hospital days, I called it Gloomsbury.
Hoefer occupied a dingy flat in Museum Mansions, and, as I entered the small room which served him as laboratory, I was almost knocked back by the choking fumes of some acid with which he was experimenting. A dense blue smoke hung over everything, and through it loomed the German’s great fleshy face and gold-rimmed spectacles. He was in his shirt-sleeves, seated at a table, watching some liquid boiling in a big glass retort. Around his mouth and nose a damp towel was tied, and as I entered he motioned me back.
“Ach! don’t come in here, my tear Colkirk! I vill come to you. Ze air is not good just now. Wait for me there in my room.”
Heedless of his warning, however, I went forward to the table, coughing and choking the while. I took out my handkerchief, when suddenly he snatched it from me, and steeped it in some pale yellow solution. Then, when I placed it before my mouth, inhaling it, I experienced no further difficulty in respiration.
The nature of the experiment on which he was engaged I could not determine. From the retort he was condensing those suffocating fumes, drop by drop, now and then dipping pieces of white, prepared paper into the liquid thus obtained. I stood by watching in silence.
Once he placed a drop of that liquid upon a glass slide, dried it for crystallisation, and, placing it beneath the microscope, examined it carefully.
He grunted. And I knew he was not satisfied.
Then he added a few drops of some colourless liquid to that in the retort, and the solution at once assumed a pale green hue. He boiled it again for three minutes by his common, metal watch, then, having drained it off into a shallow glass bowl to cool, blew out his lamp, and I followed him back into his small, cosy, but rather stuffy little den.
“Well?” he inquired. “You have called at her ladyship’s—eh?”
“Yes,” I replied, stretching myself in one of his rickety chairs; “but you were there before me. What have you discovered?”
“Nothing.”
“But that experiment I have just witnessed? Has it no connexion with the mystery?”
“Yes, some slight connexion. It was, however, a failure,” he grunted, still speaking with his strong accent.
“You experienced the same sensation there to-day, I hear?” I said.
“H’m, yes; but not so strong.”
“And the same injection cured you?”
“Of course. That, however, tells us nothing. We cannot yet ascertain how it is caused.”
“Or find out who was that unknown woman in black,” I added.
“If we could discover her we might obtain the key to the situation,” he responded.
“I have been invited by her ladyship to visit them in Wiltshire,” I said suddenly, as I lit a cigarette, “and I have accepted. Have I done right, do you think?”
“You would have done far better to stay here in London,” grunted the old man. “If we mean to get at the bottom of this mystery we must work together.”
“How?”
“In this affair, my dear Colkirk,” he exclaimed, with a sudden burst of confidence, “there is much more than of what we are aware. There is some motive in getting rid of Miss Wynd secretly and surely. I feel certain that she knows who her mysterious visitor was, but dare not tell us.”
“I am going down to Atworth,” I said. “Perhaps I shall discover something.”
“Perhaps?” he sniffed dubiously. “But, depend upon it, the key to this problem lies in London. You haven’t yet told me who this Miss Wynd is.”
“A lady who, her father being dead, went to live with Sir Henry Pierrepoint-Lane and his wife.”
“Ach! then she has no home? I thought not.”
“Why? What made you think that?”
“I fancied so,” he said, continuing to puff at his great pipe. “I fancied, too, that she had a lover—a young lover—who is a lieutenant in a cavalry regiment.”
“How did you know?”
“Merely from my own observations. It was all plain last night.”
“How?”
But he grinned at me through his great ugly spectacles without replying. I knew that he was a marvellously acute observer.
“And your opinion of her ladyship?” I inquired, much interested.
“She, like her charming cousin, is concealing the truth,” he answered frankly. “Neither are to be trusted.”
“Not Beryl—I mean Miss Wynd?”
“No; for she knows who her visitor was, and will not tell us.”
Then he paused. In that moment I made a sudden resolve; I asked him whether he had read in the newspapers the account of the Whitton tragedy.
“I read every word of it,” he responded—“a most interesting affair. I was not well at the time, otherwise I dare say I might have gone down there.”
“Yes,” I said, “from our point of view it is intensely interesting, the more so because of one fact, namely, that her ladyship was among the visitors when the Colonel was so mysteriously assassinated.”
“At Whitton!” he exclaimed, bending forward. “Was she at Whitton?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“And her cousin, Miss Wynd?”
“Of that I am not quite sure. All I know is that she was there on the afternoon previous to the tragedy. Sir Henry’s wife is Mrs Chetwode’s bosom friend.”
The old fellow grunted, closed his eyes, and puffed contentedly at his pipe.
“In that case,” he observed at last, “her ladyship may know something about that affair. Is that your suspicion?”
“Well, yes; to tell the truth, that is my opinion.”
“And also mine,” he exclaimed. “I am glad you have told me this, for it throws considerable light upon my discovery.”
“Discovery?” I echoed. “What have you discovered?”
“The identity of the woman in black who visited Miss Wynd last night.”
“You’ve discovered her—already?” I cried. “Who was she?”
“A woman known as La Gioia,” responded the queer old fellow, puffing a cloud of rank smoke from his heavy lips.
“La Gioia?” I gasped, open-mouthed and rigid. “La Gioia! And you have found her?”
“Yes; I have found her.”
Chapter Twenty Three.
A Counter-Plot.
“I have no knowledge yet of who the woman is,” responded Hoefer, in answer to my question. “I only know that her name is La Gioia. But you are aware of her identity, it seems.”
“No; like yourself, I only know her name.”
He glanced at me rather curiously through his big spectacles, and I knew that he doubted my words. I pressed him to explain by what means he had made the discovery, but his answers were ambiguous. In brief, he believed that I knew more than I really did, and therefore declined to tell me anything. He was extremely eccentric, this queer old dabbler in the occult, and I well knew that, having once adopted a plan in the pursuit of an inquiry, no power on earth would induce him to deviate from it.
Fully an hour I remained in that atmosphere full of poisonous fumes, watching a further but futile analysis that he made, and afterwards took my leave of him.
I went back to Bayswater, wrote a letter of resignation to the doctor who had employed me, and then went forth again upon my round of visits. The practice was large and scattered, and several cases were critical ones, therefore it was not until nearly eight o’clock that I returned again, fagged and hungry, only to find the waiting-room filled with club patients and others.
The irregularity of meals is one of the chief discomforts of a busy doctor’s life. I snatched a few moments to swallow my soup, and then entered the surgery and sat there until past nine ere I could commence dinner.
Then, over my coffee and a pipe, I sat at ease, thinking over the many occurrences of the day. Truly it had been an eventful one—the turning-point of my life. I had telegraphed to my mother, telling her of my good fortune, and, in response, received her hearty congratulations. One of the chief gratifications which the thousand pounds had brought to me was the fact that, for a year or so, she would not feel the absolute pinch of poverty as she had done through so long past.
And I was invited to Atworth! I should there have an opportunity of being always at the side of the woman I loved so madly, and perhaps be enabled to penetrate the veil of mystery with which she was surrounded. I was suspicious of the baronet’s wife—suspicious because she had made her first call upon me under such curious circumstances. How did she know me? and for what reason had she sought my acquaintance?
She had endeavoured to flirt with me. Faugh! Her beauty, her smartness, and her clever woman’s wiles might have turned the heads of the majority of men. But I loved Beryl, and she was mine—mine!
Reader, I have taken you entirely into my confidence, and I am laying bare to you my secret. Need I tell you how maddening the enigma had now become, how near I always seemed to some solution and yet how far off the truth? Place yourself in my position for a single moment—adoring the woman who, although she was actually my wife, was yet ignorant of the fact; and I dare not tell her the truth lest she might hold me in suspicion as one of those who had conspired against her. So far from the problem being, solved, each day rendered it more intricate and more inscrutable, until the continual weight upon my mind drove me to despair. Hence my anxiety for the days to pass in order that I might journey down to Atworth.
At last, on a close, overcast afternoon in the middle of September, when the hot sun seemed unable to penetrate the heavy veil of London smoke and the air was suffocating, I left Paddington, and, in due course, found myself upon the platform of the wayside station of Corsham, close to the entrance to the Box tunnel, where Sir Henry and his wife awaited me. The former was a tall, smart-looking, elderly man with grey hair and a well-trimmed grey beard, who, on our introduction, greeted me most cordially, expressing a hope that I should have “a good time” with them. I liked him at once; his face was open and honest, and his hand-grip was sincere.
We mounted the smart dogcart, and, leaving my baggage to the servant, drove out into the high-road which ran over the hills, looming purple in the golden sunset haze, to Trowbridge. Five miles through that picturesque, romantic district—one of the fairest in England—skirting the Monk’s Park, crossing the old Roman Road between Bath and London, and having ascended the ridge of the steep known as Corsham Side, we descended again through the little old-fashioned village of Atworth by a road which brought us, at last, to the lodge of the Hall. Then, entering the drive, we drove up to the fine old Tudor mansion, low and comfortable looking, with its long façade almost overgrown with ivy. One of “the stately homes of England,” it stood commanding a view of the whole range of the Wiltshire hills, the trees and park now bathed in the violets of the afterglow.
From the great hall the guests came forth to meet us in old English welcome, and, as I descended, Beryl herself, fresh in a pink cotton blouse and short cycling skirt, was the first to take my hand.
“At last, Doctor Colkirk!” she cried. “We’re all awfully delighted to see you.”
Our eyes met, and I saw in hers a look of genuine welcome.
“You are very kind,” I answered. “The pleasure is, I assure you, quite mutual.”
Then my host introduced me to all the others.
The house, built in the form of a square, with a large courtyard in the centre, was much larger than it appeared from the exterior. The hall, filled as it was with curios and trophies of the chase—for the baronet was a keen sportsman, and his wife, too, was an excellent shot—formed a comfortable lounge. My host and hostess had travelled widely in India and the East, and most of the Atworth collection had been acquired during their visits to the Colonies. The room assigned to me was a bright pleasant one, clean, with old-fashioned chintzes, while from the deep window I could see across the lawn and the deep glen beyond, away over the winding Avon to the darkening hills.
At dinner I was placed next my hostess, with Beryl on my left. The latter wore a striking gown of turquoise blue, which, cut low at the neck, suited her admirably. Her wonderful gold-brown hair had evidently been arranged by a practised maid; but, as I turned to her, before she seated herself, I saw, at her throat, an object which caused me to start in surprise; suspended by a thin gold chain around her neck, a small ornament in diamonds, an exact replica of that curious little charm, shaped like a note of interrogation, which I had taken from her on the fateful day of our marriage, which I wore around my own neck at the moment. As I looked it sparkled and flashed with a thousand brilliant fires. Could that strange little device convey any hidden meaning? It was curious that, having lost one, she should wear another exactly similar.
We sat down together chatting merrily. The baronet’s wife was in black lace, her white throat and arms gleaming through the transparency, while her corsage was relieved by crimson carnations. Around the table, too, were several other striking dresses, for the majority of the guests were young, and the house-party was a decidedly smart one. The meal, too, was served with a stateliness which characterised everything in the household of the Pierrepoint-Lanes.
I watched my love carefully, and saw, by her slightly flushed cheeks, that my arrival gave her the utmost satisfaction.
It was in the drawing-room afterwards, when we were sitting together, that I inquired if she had entirely recovered.
“Oh, entirely,” she replied. “It was extraordinary, was it not? Do you know whether Doctor Hoefer has visited the house again?”
“I don’t know,” I responded. “He’s so very secret in all his doings. He will tell me nothing—save one thing.”
“One thing—what is that?”
“He has discovered the identity of your visitor in black.”
“He has?” she cried quickly. “Who was she?”
“A woman whom he called by a curious foreign name,” I said, watching Beryl’s face the while. “I think he said she was known amongst her intimates as La Gioia.”
The light died in an instant from her face.
“La Gioia!” she gasped. “And he knows her?”
“I presume that, as a result of his inquiries, he has made this discovery. His shrewdness is something marvellous; he has succeeded in many cases where the cleverest detectives have utterly failed.”
“But how can he have found her?” she went on, greatly agitated by my statement.
“I have no idea. I only tell you this just as he made the announcement to me—without any explanation.”
She was silent, her eyes downcast. The ornament at her throat caught the light and glittered. My words had utterly upset her.
“I must tell Nora,” she said briefly, at last.
“But I presume that you know this person called La Gioia?” I remarked.
“Know her?” she gasped, looking up at me quickly. “Know her? How should I know her?”
“Because she visited you as a messenger from the friend whose name you refused to tell me.”
“I did not know it was her?” she declared wildly. “I cannot think that it was actually that woman.”
“You have, then, a reason for wishing not to meet her?”
“I have never met her,” she declared in a hard voice. “I do not believe she was actually that woman?”
“I have merely told you Hoefer’s statement,” I answered. “I know nothing of who or what she is; the name sounds as though she were an actress.”
“Did he tell you anything else?” she demanded. “Not another word beyond what you have already said?”
“He only told me that he had discovered her identity.”
“He has not found out her motive in visiting me?” she cried quickly.
“Not yet—as far as I am aware.”
She breathed more freely. That she desired to preserve the secret of this woman, whom she feared, was plain, but for what reason it was impossible to guess. Indeed, from her attitude, it seemed very much as though she were actually aware that her visitor and La Gioia were one and the same person. I saw by the twitching of her lips that she was nervous, and knew that she now regretted allowing Hoefer to prosecute his inquiries into the curious phenomena.
As I sat there with her, feasting my eyes upon her peerless beauty, I thought it all over, and arrived at the conclusion that, to discover the truth, I must remain patient and watchful, and never for a single instant show “my hand.”
I was suspicious of the baronet’s wife, and regarded her rather as an enemy than as a friend. She had forced herself upon me with some ulterior motive, which, although not yet apparent, would, I felt confident, be some day revealed.
Fortunately, at that moment, a smart woman in a cream gown went to the piano and began to play the overture from Adams’ Poupée de Nuremburg, rendering silence imperative. And afterwards, at my suggestion, my wife and I strolled along to the billiard-room, where we joined a party playing pool. She handled her cue quite cleverly, for a woman, and was frequently applauded for her strokes.
Of the agitation caused by my words not a single trace now remained. She was as gay, merry, and reckless as the others; indeed, she struck me as the very soul of the whole party. There was a smartness about her, without that annoying air of mannishness, which has, alas! developed among girls nowadays, and all that she did was full of that graceful sweetness so typically English.
The billiard-room echoed with laughter, again and again, for the game proved an exciting one, and the men of the party were, of course, gallant to the ladies in their play. There was a careless freedom in it all that was most enjoyable. The baronet was altogether an excellent fellow, eager to amuse everybody. What, I wondered, would he say if he knew of the vagaries of his smart wife, namely, that instead of visiting her relatives, she had run up to London for some purpose unknown? One fact was plain to me before I had been an hour in his house: he allowed her absolute and complete liberty.
We chatted together, sipping our whiskies between our turns at the game, and I found him a true type of the courteous, easy-going English gentlemen. I cannot, even to-day, tell what had prejudiced me against his wife, but somehow I did not like her. My distrust was a vague, undefined one, and I could not account for it.
She was eager to entertain me, it was true, anxious for my comfort, merry, full of smart sayings, and altogether a clever and tactful hostess. Nevertheless, I could not get away from the distinct feeling that I had been invited there with some ulterior motive.
The thought was a curious one, and it troubled me, not only that evening, but far into the silent night, as I lay awake striving to form some theory, but ever in vain.
Of one thing alone I felt absolutely assured—I am quick to distinguish the smallest signs, and I had not failed to become impressed by the truth I had read in her eyes that night—she was not sincere, she was plotting against me. I knew it, and regretted that I had accepted her invitation.