Was she exaggerating, or was Edwards such a monster as she made out? But Grewgus, a shrewd judge of demeanour, guessed by her emotion, her fervent accents, that she was telling the truth, that this man had terrorized and ill-treated her, that but for his devilish power over her she would have broken away. She remarked incidentally that she and her mother had a fair amount of money put by, their share of the proceeds from the various schemes in which they had taken part under the leadership of Stormont and Whitehouse.
She gave him a great deal of information about Edwards. This rascal had specialized chiefly in blackmail, using her in most cases as a decoy, and his activities in this direction had almost exclusively been practised abroad. The affair with Lord Wraysbury was the only serious coup he had attempted in his own country. This unscrupulous scoundrel was intensely proud of his birth and social connections, and that perhaps was the reason he did so little in England.
“But, from what he said to Whitehouse, on the day after you had so thoroughly frightened him, I don’t think he will ever return. You see, he is not sure how much you know. He guesses your inquiries were made on behalf of a private person, but he also remembers you threatened him with Scotland Yard,” said the young woman when she had concluded this portion of her story.
Grewgus explained to her that he could not very clearly see his way to assist her in her schemes of vengeance on her brutal husband, as he had appeared to confine himself almost exclusively to acts of blackmail abroad. “In all these cases,” he told her, “there is no chance of securing the co-operation of the victims. If we could have connected him with the kidnapping of Calliard, which resulted in unintentional murder, you yourself could assist the Belgian police, who have abandoned the case. But you emphatically say he was somewhere else at the time. All he did, I suppose, when in Paris was to convey the instructions set out by Stormont, and meet you from day to day to learn what progress you were making. When you both left that city, I presume others were engaged in the affair.”
Mrs. Edwards admitted that this was so. In spite of the prejudice engendered against her by his knowledge of her evil past, Grewgus had to admit that the woman had extraordinary powers of fascination. They influenced him so far that he found himself pitying her profoundly for being tied to such a brutal husband, so much so that he voluntarily offered his services to her if Edwards should again seek to intrude himself into her life.
She thanked him very sweetly. “I have a notion I shall never see him again,” she said. “But one never knows. He has made a good deal of money, but he is a very greedy man. He is very frightened just now, but his fear may pass away, and he will want to further enrich himself by the same old means. In that case, he would seek me out with the object of compelling me to help him. In that case, I should be glad to come to you in the hope that you could terrify him again.”
“What are your intentions as regards the future?” asked the detective presently. “It would hardly be safe for you to go abroad, would it? You would be pretty certain to run across him some day.”
“Yes, I would prefer living on the Continent, but I dare not run the risk of falling in with him again. After the design upon Lord Wraysbury miscarried, thanks to your intervention, and both Whitehouse and Edwards judged it prudent to clear out, I telegraphed to my mother to come over from Rouen, where she was living quietly. We talked over matters very thoroughly, and we made up our minds that we would hide ourselves in some corner of England under an assumed name.”
Grewgus could not help smiling at this last remark. This fascinating young woman had gone under so many different names, that the adoption of another alias would come very naturally to her.
“I understand, then, that you propose for the future to go straight.”
“Most certainly,” was the reply given in a tone that showed absolute sincerity. “Through you, the particular coterie to which I belonged has been practically dispersed. Howard Stormont, for whom I had something like a feeling of affection for his kindness to me, took his own way out of it; he was a thriftless, improvident man and he saw ruin staring him in the face. Whitehouse was altogether different. He was careful, not to say parsimonious. By now he must have saved a great deal of money, and I know it was his intention to give up the life as soon as he had amassed enough to live on. I think he was only waiting for the Wraysbury coup to come off to execute that intention. Its failure has made him forestall it.”
“You know where he is at the present moment, of course?” asked Grewgus.
“No, I do not,” was the emphatic answer, and the detective believed that it was a truthful one. “When we talked the matter over, we both agreed that it was best we should know nothing of each other’s movements. I suppose we had both lived in such an atmosphere of suspicion and secrecy, that he did not care to trust me; I was equally disinclined to trust him.”
“Why did he carry on that solicitor’s business? He had no genuine business, had he?”
Mrs. Edwards smiled. “Although I did not particularly like the man, I had no grudge against him, and we always got on comfortably together, and I should not care to do him a bad turn. But I think now I can answer that question without doing him any harm. He had practically no legal business, but he acted for the organization in cases where they wanted advice. He was actually a money-lender, and having got his articles when a young man, before he took to a life of crime, set up as a solicitor in order to present a more respectable appearance. I believe he made a great deal of money that way.”
“And I suppose you know how he and Stormont became first acquainted?”
Mrs. Edwards was perfectly frank about the matter. “Whitehouse and he met originally in Australia. Whitehouse had been affiliated to a rather high-class gang for some time, and I suppose he recognized in Stormont a very promising recruit. They engaged in some enterprises there, and Stormont got into trouble. When he came out of prison he returned to England and hunted up his old friend. In due course, Stormont became a leading member of the organization. I was one of his assistants, and I am sure he had several others. But he was a very cautious man, in spite of his bluff and genial manners, and he never allowed us to know much of each other. He and Whitehouse directed affairs in their own particular branch.”
Grewgus was feeling very well satisfied with the result of the interview. The candour of the fascinating young woman had led her actually to confirm his different discoveries and suspicions. There was one other matter, however, on which he wished to obtain further enlightenment.
“The affair with Hugh Craig at Nice, was Stormont at the back of that?”
Mrs. Edwards did not appear to answer quite as readily as before.
“Yes, it was he who first set me upon it. He knew that Craig, although not a wealthy man, had some money.”
“And you were married to Edwards at the time, of course?” was the detective’s next question.
“Not at the time I first met Craig. Our marriage came later. But, as I told you, we lived only occasionally together. The exigencies of our calling rendered it necessary for us to be apart the best part of our married life.”
“And I know that you relieved poor Craig of a good deal of his money.”
“I had to obey orders in this case as in the others,” was the young woman’s answer; and Grewgus could perceive that she was speaking with considerable emotion. “It was the most painful episode in my career, for the poor young fellow was desperately in love with me. When a foolish blunder on my part roused his suspicions, I think his mind became unhinged. He would never have tried to kill me if he had been in full possession of his senses. I can guess you know all the details of the ghastly story from his great friend, Lydon.”
Grewgus nodded, and Mrs. Edwards, conquering her emotion, went on in a calmer voice:
“I always felt a premonition that Stormont made the greatest mistake of his life when he cultivated Lydon’s acquaintance with the view of providing a good match for his niece. He should have steered clear of anybody who had a knowledge at first hand of that tragedy. I told him so when I first heard of it. I told him again when I met Lydon that day at Effington. He laughed at my fears, said that we had never met, and that if I kept my mother out of the way, all would be well. Dozens of girls had a similar blemish. How was he likely to connect me with Elise Makris? Lydon, I must say, acted very well. I did not suspect for a moment that he recognized me. I cannot guess to this day how he did.”
“I think I can enlighten you on that point,” said Grewgus, who felt, after her attitude to him, that he could afford to show a little candour. He touched the sapphire pendant which she was wearing, and told her what Lydon had learned about it on the day he saw it lying on the table in a room of the Villa des Cyclamens.
“If it had been the blemish only, Mrs. Edwards, he might not have identified you,” Grewgus concluded. “But it was that which gave him the clue—your mascot which your mother said you always wore, and which she had taken from you that day in the hospital.”
“Ah, now I understand. The incident must have passed completely from my mother’s mind, for although we have often talked together of young Lydon, and the necessity of keeping her out of his way, she never spoke of it. Strange, very strange,” she added in a musing voice, “that this little mascot in which I so firmly believed should be the cause of all that has happened, should have set you, through Lydon, on the track of myself, Stormont and the others.”
Grewgus presently brought the conversation round again to Hugh Craig directly, and artfully cross-examined her as to the manner in which she had blackmailed him. But to his questions he did not get very distinct replies. He gathered that, in his infatuation for the beautiful girl, the young man had parted with large sums, ostensibly to defray debts incurred by herself and her mother, sums which were divided in certain proportions between the confederates in the schemes. But he failed to get any precise details. She sheltered her reticence under the plea that it gave her inexpressible pain to dwell upon those miserable days.
She left him shortly, with renewed thanks for his promise to help her in case Edwards should return and endeavour to force his society upon her. And after she had left, he sat for a long time meditating on herself, her strange charm, and all she had told him.
Had she been only playing a part in order to excite his sympathy, or had she always hated the life which had been thrust upon her by her environment, and was only too thankful to embrace this opportunity of quitting it?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Leonard and Gloria were married a month before Jasper Stormont and his wife left England for China. That last month they spent in London. It was a very quiet wedding; a cousin of the bridegroom officiated as one of the bridesmaids, the two others were girl friends of the bride, and had been her bosom friends at Effington, where the memory of Howard Stormont was still held in kindly remembrance by those who would have been horrified if they had known the truth about him. Mr. Grewgus was present at the ceremony, and presented dainty gifts to both bride and bridegroom.
Leonard had bought a charming house in the neighbourhood of Godalming with some four acres of pretty grounds. It could not compare with the magnificence of Effington Hall, where Howard Stormont had played the rôle of country gentleman what time he was hatching his evil schemes in conjunction with his taciturn fellow-criminal, John Whitehouse. But to Gloria it was a haven of peace and delight, with her flowers and dogs and the sweet sounds and scents of country life. She and her young husband are devoted to each other, and although they have the most friendly relations with their neighbours, are full of happiness when they are alone.
Twelve months had passed, and the villainy of Stormont and his associates had become almost a faint memory to the young wedded couple. Grewgus was always engaged in fresh investigations, and the case to which he had given so much time and attention had almost been jostled out of his mind by fresh problems.
Then one morning in the newspaper he read something that greatly startled him and sent his thoughts travelling back to the strenuous time when he had made that journey to Paris in pursuit of the woman suspected to be Elise Makris.
His eye caught sight of the headline. “Murder and suicide in a small Devonshire village.” Two very clear portraits of the victim, a woman, and the murderer who had shot himself after killing her, stared at him from the pages of the newspapers. The woman was Elise Makris, to call her by the first name under which he had known of her in these pages; the man was Bertram Edwards.
The report stated that a Mrs. Mayhew and her daughter Mrs. Baradine had come to this village about a year ago, where they had purchased a house of moderate size. They led a quiet and secluded life, only mixing infrequently with the few neighbours of a respectable class around them. Both women gave themselves out as widows. They attended church regularly and visited at the Vicar’s house. Although little was known about them, they had made a very favourable impression on everybody with whom they had come in contact. The daughter was quite a young woman and of remarkable beauty.
No visitors except those in the immediate neighbourhood had ever been known to enter their doors. But one day their comparative isolation had been disturbed. According to the account of one of the two maids, a handsome man about thirty with very urbane and courteous manners had called and requested that his name should be taken in to the ladies. The name he gave was Edwards.
The mention of this name, when the maid took it in to the drawing-room where the two women were seated, seemed to arouse consternation in both mother and daughter. After a whispered conversation between the two, Mrs. Baradine went into the hall and took the strange visitor to her mother. The door of the room was closed, and the three sat together for over an hour. At the end of that time, Mrs. Baradine went out with the man Edwards and they did not return till it wanted a few minutes to dinner.
The visitor stayed the night, sleeping in one of the spare bedrooms at the back of the house. He stopped on the next day. From a remark dropped by Mrs. Mayhew to the maid after breakfast, she gathered that Edwards was taking his departure on the following morning. During the whole of his visit, the demeanour of both mother and daughter exhibited symptoms of great depression and anxiety.
They all dined together on the evening of the second day. After dinner Mrs. Mayhew went out for a stroll, leaving Edwards and Mrs. Baradine in the dining-room by themselves. The housemaid also went out, and the rest of the story was finished by the other servant, the cook.
This woman, very curious as to this strange visitor, admitted that twice she went into the hall and listened at the dining-room door. The second time she heard voices high in altercation, but could not gather what was being said. Suddenly, as she sat in the kitchen, speculating on what was taking place between her young mistress and the man Edwards, a shot rang out, followed in a fraction of time by a second one. Sensing that a tragedy had happened, she rushed into the room and was confronted with a ghastly spectacle. Mrs. Baradine was lying on the floor dead, and beside her Edwards with a bullet through his brain. Screaming, she fled into the village in search of the local constable, whom she brought back to the house. Five minutes after they came back, Mrs. Mayhew returned from her walk and fainted at the awful sight.
Later on, the mother told her story. Mrs. Baradine was not a widow; her real name was Edwards and she was the wife of the man who had killed her, and who, realizing the impossibility of escape, destroyed himself. Hers had been a most unhappy marriage, and, to escape from her husband’s brutality, she had left him and hid herself, as she fondly hoped, in this quiet Devonshire village under an assumed name.
By some means he had tracked her down, and had visited her with the view of obtaining her forgiveness of the past, and inducing her to resume their married life. To his request she had returned an obstinate refusal, in which he seemed to have acquiesced, as he announced his intention of returning to London on the following day. On the evening of the fatal day, Mrs. Mayhew had left them alone after dinner, apparently on fairly amicable terms. She could only conjecture that, during her absence, he had sought to alter her daughter’s resolution, that high words had ensued, and that in the violence of his passion he had first taken her life and then his own.
Mrs. Mayhew, otherwise Madame Makris, was a clever woman and had told her story well; she had kept out of it anything that would arouse suspicions of the past. But Grewgus, with his knowledge, was able to read between the lines.
Edwards had felt his old criminal instincts rising within him. So long a time had elapsed without any action being taken that he had concluded the past was done with. To the successful accomplishment of any future schemes, his wife was necessary. He had tracked her down to this lonely Devonshire village, and used all his arts of persuasion to induce her to return to him. A man of brutal and violent passions, he had been maddened by her refusal, and in a fit of frenzy bordering on delirium had killed her.
After he had mastered the facts, Grewgus went round to Lydon’s office. The young man knew what he had come for. He and Gloria had read the same news at breakfast.
“I wonder if she was wearing her mascot when he killed her?” said Lydon in a musing tone. “It saved her from the consequences of her lover’s bullet, but not from her husband’s.”
“And so that is the end of three out of the four,” observed Grewgus in the same thoughtful voice. “I wonder if Nemesis has yet overtaken that gloomy miscreant, John Whitehouse, or if he is living somewhere a life of smug respectability on his ill-gotten gains?”
But that question has not been answered yet. For all that is known to the contrary, John Whitehouse, as great a criminal as the others, may be leading the life suggested by the detective.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. moneylender/money-lender, note-book/note book, womenfolk/women-folk, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Abandon the use of drop-caps.
Add ToC.
Punctuation: a few missing/invisible periods.
[Chapter Two]
Change “a gorgeous carved sapphire make into a pendant” to made.
“very shortly after the terribly tragedy, with instructions” to terrible.
[Chapter Six]
“on a considerable snm of money for its purchase” to sum.
[Chapter Eleven]
“The Storments had a small private sitting-room” to Stormonts.
[Chapter Seventeen]
“with something of a snarl in his voiec” to voice.
[End of text]