CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE BLACKMAILER.
Madame Barto’s doorbell clanged impatiently twice, and then a deeply veiled young lady was admitted, and shown to the small parlor where madame received her callers. She glanced around her, muttering:
“Almost two years since I was here, yet how familiar everything appears! Madame herself would have the same old lying story to tell, perchance, if I were to cross her palm again with silver! Pah! the dingy hole disgusts me. I wish that wretch would hasten! I have no time to waste here, and Aunt Verna so ill that it was unseemly for me to quit the house.”
She paced up and down the floor with the impatience of a caged lioness.
“Why don’t he come? It is money again, I suppose! Money—always money! And since my unfaithful guardian speculated with my money and lost so much of it, I have scarcely enough for my own needs. I shall be glad when I am safely married to Frank, for then I shall defy Carey Doyle to do his worst. I can deny his story if he dares bring any charges, and Frank Laurier, I know, will defend his wife’s honor to the last. Ah, how I long to see him again, my love, my own! His steamer is due to-day, and I am wild with impatience. Ah! what cruel suspense I have endured since he went away. And even now I dread the meeting. My beauty is not as brilliant as before my terrible accident, and I shall always be compelled to depend on cosmetics to aid the charms that before were unsurpassed!”
She flung back her thick veil and paused before a mirror, studying her face intently, as she had contracted a habit of doing now.
She was indeed changed from the brilliant Cora of two years ago.
The beauty specialists had done their best, but they could not restore all that the cruel flames had licked up so relentlessly that fatal wedding eve.
She had tried to cheat Frank Laurier, but she could not cheat herself, and she dreaded inexpressibly the moment of their meeting.
“Will his love survive the change? Has it, indeed, survived our long parting?” she asked herself anxiously, for she had not failed to notice how indifferent his letters had been, and how few and far between.
She thought:
“Perhaps he thinks I should release him, and that his indifference will goad me into it, but I will never do it, not even if he asked me! After all, I am afraid Frank is rather fickle in his love! He turned from me to another—that Jessie Lyndon that my aunt claimed as her daughter. If she had lived, I fear she would have made me trouble with Frank, for he must have secretly admired her, and it is fortunate for me in all ways that she died—for one thing, on account of her rivalry; the other, that now Aunt Verna will leave me her millions when she dies! And that may not be long, for she is certainly very ill now, and—ah!” her low soliloquy ended with a start as a young man abruptly entered the room.
“Good morning, Miss Ellyson. I am glad you obeyed my summons so promptly,” he sneered, with coarse triumph.
She frowned angrily as she cried:
“You are impertinent, Carey Doyle. How dared you summon me here?”
“You have ignored all my letters asking for money, and I had too much respect for your position to annoy you at your aunt’s, so I thought it was the best plan for you to meet me here and discuss matters.”
“What is it that you wish?”
“Money, of course!”
“Wretch! I have paid you over and over for keeping that miserable secret!”
“You have not paid me half that it was worth to you, my proud lady!” Carey Doyle answered boldly.
She was furious with rage, her eyes gleaming, her face death-white, her small hands clenched. She thought bitterly that she wished he were dead and lying by the side of her victim down in the old stone quarry, the thought of whose ghastly secret had kept her sleepless many a night.
But she had reasoned to herself many a time that the crime could never be traced to her, for she had covered up the clues too cleverly by her story of his suicidal threats.
Even if they were to find the whitening bones of Ernest Noel down in the dim old quarry, they could not fasten his death on anybody. They would simply believe he had carried out his threat of suicide.
Her anger blazed at the thought that in this insolent man, the witness of her evil deed, lay her only peril.
“I will not give you any more money, I have exhausted my resources. Besides, I am not afraid of your story. You will not dare repeat it, for I would give you into custody for attempted blackmail!” she hissed threateningly.
But Carey Doyle’s laugh was not reassuring. It stung her to fury, yet inspired her with alarm, though she persisted:
“I am not afraid of you. No one will take your word against mine!”
“You may risk it if you choose,” he answered, with persistent nonchalance.
She measured him with a scornful glance, but she could not cow him, and her heart sank with fear.
By to-morrow Frank Laurier would be in New York. Within a week, if woman’s wit could compass it, she would be his wife. Dare she risk any disclosure that might rouse her lover’s suspicions, and so postpone the wedding again?
She groaned in spirit, but she decided that she dare not defy Carey Doyle until she had a husband to defend her against his charges.
“How much do you require?”
“Just one thousand dollars!”
“You ask too much.”
“I cannot do with less.”
“You must!”
“I will not!”
They glared at each other, but she saw that she could not shake his resolution.
Swallowing her rage and chagrin, she expostulated:
“It is but a month ago I gave you five hundred dollars—and—and—since that night you helped me you have had four thousand dollars.”
“For which I am most profoundly grateful,” airily, “and a poor price for such a secret, too, so you shouldn’t mind a last payment such as I ask for now.”
“A last payment! You will be calling for more in a week.”
“I swear to you I will not. I am about to leave the city for Alaska.”
“Do you mean it?”
“As surely as the sun shines in the heavens this bright September day! Perhaps you have read, Miss Ellyson, of the wonderful gold finds in Alaska that have stirred the whole country into a fever. Well, I have joined a party to go out to the gold diggings, and I mean to make my fortune or lose my life, whichever fate wills. It will cost me a thousand dollars to get to the Klondike, so you see I shall have no means of returning from those frozen wilds till I make my pile. Surely you would not begrudge a thousand dollars to be rid of me forever?”
No, she would not. It would be a small price to pay to rid herself of this terrible incubus.
She had read in all the newspapers of the perils of the awful journey to Alaska, and she thought in her heart with joy that surely he could never return from beyond the far Yukon.
Cora had shuddered at the tales of Alaska, but now she brightened at the thought that Carey Doyle was not, indeed, likely to return from so grim a journey.
“Since you need it so much and promise never to ask for more, I will try to get the sum for you within the week,” she said, adding:
“I will send a letter to this address telling you when and how I will pay it to you. Is that satisfactory?”
“Perfectly, for I know you will keep your word,” he replied, smiling to himself at the victory he had won over the haughty girl who scorned him even while she cringed beneath his power.
She inclined her head haughtily, drew down the thick veil again, and swept out of the house down to her waiting limousine, and so back to Mrs. Dalrymple’s, where, since her return from the hospital, she again made her home, the Van Dorns being indefinitely absent in Paris.