Mrs. Cathcart might have said in truth that she did not know what to think.
The necklace was a valuable one, and there were other considerations.
Mr. Warrell was evidently thinking of its sentimental value, for he went on—
“But for the fact that jewels of this kind have associations I might suggest that your new son-in-law would possibly replace your loss.”
She turned upon him with a hard smile.
“My new son-in-law!” she scoffed. “Good Lord!”
Warrell knew Standerton, and regarded him as one of Fortune’s favourites, and was in no doubt as to his financial stability.
The contempt in the woman’s tone shocked him as only a City man can be shocked by a whisper against the credit of gilt-edged stock.
For the moment he forgot the object of his visit.
He would have liked to have asked for an explanation, but he felt that it did not lie within the province of Mrs. Cathcart’s broker to demand information upon her domestic affairs.
“It is a pretty rotten mess you have got me into, Warrell,” she said, and got up.
He rose with her, picked up his hat, and exhumed his buried gloves.
“It is very awkward indeed,” he said, “tremendously awkward for you, and tremendously awkward for me, my dear Mrs. Cathcart. I am sure you will pity me in my embarrassment.”
“I am too busy pitying myself,” she said shortly.
She sat in the drawing-room alone after the broker’s departure.
What should she do? For what Warrell did not know was that the necklace was not hers. It had been one which the old Colonel had had reset for his daughter, and which had been bequeathed to the girl in her father’s will.
A family circle which consists of a mother and a daughter exercises communal rights over property which may appear curious to families more extensive in point of number. Though Edith had known the jewel was hers, she had not demurred when her mother had worn it, and had never even hinted that she would prefer to include it amongst the meagre stock of jewellery in her own case.
Yet it had always been known as “Edith’s necklace.”
Mrs. Cathcart had referred to it herself in these terms, and an uncomfortable feature of their estrangement had been the question of the necklace and its retention by the broker.
Mrs. Cathcart shrugged her shoulders. There was nothing to be done; she must trust to luck. She could not imagine that Edith would ever feel the need of the jewel; yet if her husband was poor, and she was obsessed with this absurd sense of loyalty to the man who had deceived her, there might be a remote possibility that from a sheer quixotic desire to help her husband, she would make inquiries as to the whereabouts of the necklace.
Edith was not like that, thought Mrs. Cathcart. It was a comforting thought as she made her way up the stairs to her room.
She stopped half-way up to allow the maid to overtake her with the letters which had arrived at that moment. With a little start she recognised upon the first of these the handwriting of her daughter, and tore open the envelope. The letter was brief:—
“Dear Mother,” it ran,
“Would you please arrange for me to have the necklace which father left to me. I feel now that I must make some sort of display if only for my husband’s sake.”
The letter dropped from Mrs. Cathcart’s hand. She stood on the stairs transfixed.
* * * *
Edith Standerton was superintending the arrangement of the lunch table when her husband came in. Life had become curiously systematised in the St. John’s Wood house.
To neither of the young people had it seemed possible that they could live together as now they did, in perfect harmony, in sympathy, yet with apparently no sign of love or demonstration of affection on either side.
To liken them to brother and sister would be hardly descriptive of their friendship. They lacked the mutual knowledge of things, and the common interest which brother and sister would have. They wanted, too, an appreciation of one another’s faults and virtues.
They were strangers, and every day taught each something about the other. Gilbert learnt that this quiet girl, whose sad grey eyes had hinted at tragedy, had a sense of humour, could laugh on little provocation, and was immensely shrewd in her appraisement of humanity.
She, for her part, had found a force she had not reckoned on, a vitality and a doggedness of purpose which she had never seen before their marriage. He could be entertaining, too, in the rare intervals when they were alone together. He was a traveller, had visited Persia, Arabia, and the less known countries of Eastern Asia.
She never referred again to the events of that terrible marriage night. Here, perhaps, her judgment was at fault. She had seen a player with a face of extraordinary beauty, and had given perhaps too much attention to this minor circumstance. Somewhere in her husband’s heart was a secret, what that secret was she could only guess. She guessed that it was associated in some way with a woman—therein the woman in her spoke.
She had no feeling of resentment either towards her husband or to the unknown who had sent a message through the trembling strings of her violin upon that wedding night.
Only, she told herself, it was “curious.” She wanted to know what it was all about. She had the healthy curiosity of the young. The revelation might shock her, might fill her with undying contempt for the man whose name she bore, but she wanted to know.
It piqued her too, after a while, that he should have any secrets from her—a strange condition of mind, remembering the remarkable relationship in which they stood, and yet one quite understandable.
Though they had not achieved the friendly and peculiar relationship of man and wife, there had grown up between them a friendship which the girl told herself (and did her best to believe) was of a more enduring character than that which marriage qua marriage could produce. It was a comradeship in which much was taken for granted; she took for granted that he loved her, and entered into the marriage with no other object. That was a comforting basis for friendship with any woman.
For his part, he took it for granted that she had a soul above deception, that she was frank even though in her frankness she wounded him almost to death. He detected in that an unusual respect for himself, though in his more logical mood he argued she would have acted as honourably to any man.
She herself wove into the friendship a peculiar sexless variety of romance—sexless since she thought she saw in it an accomplished ideal towards which the youth of all ages have aspired without any conspicuous success.
There is no man or woman in the world who does not think that the chance in a million may be his or hers; there is no human creature so diffident that it does not imagine in its favour is created exception to evident and universal rules.
Plato may have stopped dead in his conduct of other friendships, his philosophies may have frizzled hopelessly and helplessly, and have been evaporated to thin vapour before the fire of natural love. A thousand witnesses may rise to testify to the futility of friendship in two people of opposite sex, but there always is the “you” and the “me” in the world, who defies experience, and comes with sublime faith to show how different will be the result to that which has attended all previous experiments.
As she told herself, if there had been the slightest spark of love in her bosom for this young man who had come into her life with some suddenness, and had gone out in a sense so violently, only to return in another guise, if there had been the veriest smouldering ember of the thing called love in her heart, she would have been jealous, just a little jealous, of the interests which drew him away from her every night, and often brought him home when the grey dawn was staining the blue of the East.
She had watched him once from her window, and had wondered vaguely what he found to do at night.
Was he seeking relaxation from an intolerable position? He never gave her the impression that it was intolerable. There was comfort in that thought.
Was there—somebody else?
Here was a question to make her knit her brows, this loveless wife.
Once she found herself, to her intense amazement, on the verge of tears at the thought. She went through all the stages of doubt and decision, of anger and contrition, which a young wife more happily circumstanced might have experienced.
Who was the violin player with the beautiful face? What part had she taken in Gilbert’s life?
One thing she did know, her husband was gambling on the Stock Exchange. At first she did not realise that he could be so commonplace. She had always regarded him as a man to whom vulgar money-grabbing would be repugnant. He had surrendered his position at the Foreign Office; he was now engaged in some business which neither discussed. She thought many things, but until she discovered the contract note of a broker upon his desk, she had never suspected success on the Stock Exchange as the goal of his ambition.
This transaction seemed an enormous one to her.
There were tens of thousands of shares detailed upon the note. She knew very little about the Stock Exchange, except that there had been mornings when her mother had been unbearable as a result of her losses. Then it occurred to her, if he were in business—a vague term which meant anything—she might do something more than sit at home and direct his servants.
She might help him also in another way. Business men have expedient dinners, give tactful theatre parties. And many men have succeeded because they have wives who are wise in their generation.
It was a good thought. She held a grand review of her wardrobe, and posted the letter which so completely destroyed her mother’s peace of mind.
Gilbert had been out all the morning, and he came back from the City looking rather tired.
An exchange of smiles, a little strained and a little hard on one side, a little wistful and a little sad on the other, had become the conventional greeting between the two, so too had the inquiry, “Did you sleep well?” which was the legitimate property of whosoever thought first of this original question.
They were in the midst of lunch when she asked suddenly—
“Would you like me to give a dinner party?”
He looked up with a start.
“A dinner party!” he said incredulously, then, seeing her face drop, and realising something of the sacrifice which she might be making, he added, “I think it is an excellent idea. Whom would you like to invite?”
“Any friends you have,” she said, “that rather nice man Mr. Frankfort, and—— Who else?” she asked.
He smiled a little grimly.
“I think that rather nice man Mr. Frankfort about exhausts the sum of my friends,” he said with a little laugh. “We might ask Warrell.”
“Who is Warrell? Oh, I know,” she said quickly, “he is mother’s broker.”
He looked at her curiously.
“Your mother’s broker,” he repeated slowly, “is he really?”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?” he evaded.
“Why did you say that so queerly?”
“I did not know that I did,” he said carelessly, “only somehow one doesn’t associate your mother with a broker. Yet I suppose she finds an agent necessary in these days. You see, he is my broker too.”
“Who else?” she asked.
“On my side of the family,” he said with mock solemnity, “I can think of nobody. What about your mother?”
“I could ask one or two nice people,” she went on, ignoring the suggestion.
“What about your mother?” he said again.
She looked up, her eyes filled with tears.
“Please do not be horrid,” she said. “You know that is impossible.”
“Not at all,” he answered cheerfully. “I made the suggestion in all good faith; I think it is a good one. After all, there is no reason why this absurd quarrel should go on. I admit I felt very sore with her; but then I even felt sore with you!”
He looked at her not unkindly.
“The soreness is gradually wearing away,” he said.
He spoke half to himself, though he looked at the girl. It seemed to her that he was trying to convince himself of something in which he did not wholly believe.
“It is extraordinary,” he said, “how little things, little worries, and petty causes for unhappiness disappear in the face of a really great trouble.”
“What is your great trouble?” she asked, quick to seize the advantage which he had given her in that unguarded moment.
“None,” he said. His tone was a little louder than usual, it was almost defiant. “I am speaking hypothetically.
“I have no trouble save the very obvious troubles of life,” he went on. “You were a trouble to me for quite a little time, but you are not any more.”
“I am glad you said that,” she said softly. “I want to be real good friends with you, Gilbert—I want to be a real good friend to you. I have made rather a hash of your life, I’m afraid.”
She had risen from the table and stood looking down at him.
He shook his head.
“I do not think you have,” he said, “not the hash that you imagine. Other circumstances have conspired to disfigure what was a pleasant outlook. It is unfortunate that our marriage has not proved to be all that I dreamt it would be, but then dreams are very unstable foundations to the fabric of life. You would not think that I was a dreamer, would you?” he said quickly with that ready smile of his, those eyes that creased into little lines at the corners. “You would not imagine me as a romancist, though I am afraid I was.”
“You are, you mean,” she corrected.
He made no reply to that.
The question of the dinner came up later, when he was preparing to go out.
“You would not like to stay and talk it over, I suppose,” she suggested a little timidly.
He hesitated.
“There is nothing I should like better,” he said, “but”—he looked at his watch.
She pressed her lips together, and for one moment felt a wave of unreasoning anger sweeping over her. It was absurd, of course, he always went out at this time, and there was really no reason why he should stay in.
“We can discuss it another time,” she said coldly, and left him without a further word.
He waited until he heard the door close in her room above, and then he went out with a little smile in which there were tears almost, but in which there was no merriment.
He left the house at a propitious moment; had he waited another five minutes he would have met his mother-in-law.
Mrs. Cathcart had made up her mind to “own up” and had come in person to make the confession. It was a merciful providence, so she told herself, that had taken Gilbert out of the way; that he had gone out she discovered before she had been in the house four minutes, and she discovered it by the very simple process of demanding from Gilbert’s servant whether his master was at home.
Edith heard of her mother’s arrival without surprise. She supposed that Mrs. Cathcart had come to hand the necklace to its lawful owner. She felt some pricking of conscience as she came down the stairs to meet her mother; had she not been unnecessarily brusque in her demand! She was a tender soul, and had a proper and natural affection for the elder woman. The fear that she might have hurt her feelings, and that that hurt might be expressed at the interview gave her a little qualm as she opened the drawing-room door.
Mrs. Cathcart was coolness itself. You might have thought that never a scene had occurred between these two women which could be remembered with unkindliness. No reference was made to the past, and Edith was glad.
It was not her desire that she should live on bad terms with her mother. She understood her too well, which was unfortunate for both, and it would be all the happier for them if they could maintain some pretence of friendship.
Mrs. Cathcart came straight to the point.
“I suppose you know why I have called,” she said, after the first exchange.
“I suppose you have brought the necklace,” said the girl with a smile. “You do not think I am horrid to ask for it, but I feel I ought to do something for Gilbert.”
“I think you might have chosen another subject for your first letter,” said the elder woman grimly, “but still——”
Edith made no reply. It was useless to argue with her mother. Mrs. Cathcart had a quality which is by no means rare in the total of human possessions, the quality of putting other people in the wrong.
“I am more sorry,” Mrs. Cathcart resumed, “because I am not in a position to give you your necklace.”
The girl stared at her mother in wonder.
“Why! Whatever do you mean, mother?” she asked.
Mrs. Cathcart carefully avoided her eyes.
“I have had losses on the Stock Exchange,” she said. “I suppose you know that your father left us just sufficient to starve on, and whatever luxury and whatever comfort you have had has been due to my own individual efforts? I have lost a lot of money over Canadian Pacifics,” she said bluntly.
“Well?” asked the girl, wondering what was coming next, and fearing the worst.
“I made a loss of seven hundred pounds with a firm of stockbrokers,” Mrs. Cathcart continued, “and I deposited your necklace with the firm as security.” The girl gasped. “I intended, of course, redeeming it, but an unfortunate thing happened—the safe was burgled and the necklace was stolen.”
Edith Standerton stared at the other.
The question of the necklace did not greatly worry her, yet she realised now that she had depended rather more upon it than she had thought. It was a little nest-egg against a bad time, which, if Gilbert spoke the truth, might come at any moment.
“It cannot be helped,” she said.
She did not criticise her mother or offer any opinion upon the impropriety of offering as security for debt articles which are the property of somebody else.
Such criticism would have been wasted, and the effort would have been entirely superfluous.
“Well,” asked Mrs. Cathcart, “what have you got to say?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
“What can I say, mother? The thing is lost, and there is an end to it. Do the firm offer any compensation?”
She asked the question innocently: it occurred to her as a wandering thought that possibly something might be saved from the wreck.
Mrs. Cathcart shot a swift glance at her.
Had that infernal Warrell been communicating with her? She knew that Warrell was a friend of Edith’s husband. It would be iniquitous of him if he had.
“Some compensation was offered,” she answered carelessly, “quite inadequate; the matter is not settled yet, but I will let you know how it develops.”
“What compensation do they offer?” asked Edith.
Mrs. Cathcart hesitated.
“A thousand pounds,” she said reluctantly.
“A thousand pounds!”
The girl was startled, she had no idea the necklace was of that value.
“That means, of course,” Mrs. Cathcart hastened to explain, “seven hundred pounds out of my pocket and three hundred pounds from the broker.”
The girl smiled inwardly. “Seven hundred pounds from my pocket” meant, “if you ask for the full value you will rob me.”
“And there is three hundred pounds due. I think I had better have that.”
“Wait a little,” said Mrs. Cathcart, “they may recover the necklace, anyway; they want me to give a description of it. What do you think?”
The girl shook her head.
“I do not think I should like that,” she said quietly. “Questions might be asked, and I should not like people to know either that the necklace was mine, or that my mother had deposited it as security against her debts.”
Here was the new Edith with a vengeance. Mrs. Cathcart stared at her.
“Edith,” she said severely, “that sounds a little impertinent.”
“I dare say it does, mother,” said the girl, “but what am I to do? What am I to say? There are the facts fairly apparent to you and to me; the necklace is stolen, and it may possibly never be recovered, and I am not going to expose either my loss or your weakness on the remote possibility of getting back an article of jewellery which probably by this time is in the melting-pot and the stones dispersed.”
“You know a great deal about jewels and jewel-robbers,” said her mother with a little sneer. “Has Gilbert been enlarging your education?”
“Curiously enough, he has,” said her daughter calmly; “we discuss many queer things.”
“You must have very pleasant evenings,” said the elder woman dryly. She rose to go, looking at her watch. “I am sorry I cannot stay,” she said, “but I am dining with some people. I suppose you would not like to come along? It is quite an informal affair; as a matter of fact, the invitation included you.”
“And Gilbert?” asked the girl.
The woman smiled.
“No, it did not exactly include Gilbert,” she said. “I have made it pretty clear that invitations to me are acceptable only so long as the party does not include your husband.”
The girl drew herself up stiffly, and the elder woman saw a storm gathering in her eyes.
“I do not quite understand you. Do you mean that you have gone round London talking unkindly about my husband?”
“Of course I have,” said Mrs. Cathcart virtuously. “I do not know about having gone round London, but I have told those people who are intimate friends of mine, and who are naturally interested in my affairs.”
“You have no right to speak,” said the girl angrily, “it is disgraceful of you. You have made your mistake, and you must abide by the consequence. I also have made a mistake, and I cheerfully accept my lot. If it hurts you that I am married to a man who despises me, how much more do you think it hurts me?”
Mrs. Cathcart laughed.
“I assure you,” she smiled, “that though many thoughts disturb my nights, the thought that your husband has no particular love for you is not one of them; what does wake me up with a horrid feeling is the knowledge that so far from being the rich man I thought he was, he is practically penniless. What madness induced him to give up his work at the Foreign Office?”
“You had better ask him,” said the girl with malice, “he will be in in a few moments.”
It needed only this to hasten Mrs. Cathcart’s departure, and Edith was left alone.
* * * *
Edith dined alone that night.
At first she had welcomed with a sense of infinite relief these solitary dinners. She was a woman of considerable intelligence, and she had faced the future without illusion.
She realised that there might come a time when she and Gilbert would live together in perfect harmony, though without the essential sympathies which husband and wife should mutually possess. She was willing to undergo the years of probation, and it made it all the easier for her if business or pleasure kept them apart during the embarrassing hours between dinner and bed-time.
But to-night, for the first time, she was lonely.
She felt the need of him, the desire for his society, the cheer and the vitality of him.
There were moments when he was bright and happy and flippant, as she had known him at his best. There were other moments too, terrible and depressing moments, when she never saw him, when he shut himself in his study and she only caught a glimpse of his face by accident. She went through her dinner alternately reading and thinking.
A book lay upon the table by her side, but she did not turn one page. The maid was clearing the entrée when Edith Standerton looked up with a start.
“What is it?” she said.
“What, madam?” asked the girl.
Outside the window Edith could hear the sound of music, a gentle, soft cadence of sound, a tiny wail of melodious tragedy.
She rose from the table, walked across to the window and pulled aside the blinds. Outside a girl was playing a violin. In the light which a street lamp afforded Edith recognised the player of the “Melody in F.”
CHAPTER IX.
EDITH MEETS THE PLAYER
Edith turned to her waiting maid.
“Go out and bring the girl in at once,” she said quietly.
“Which girl, madam?” asked the startled servant.
“The girl who is playing,” said Edith. “Hurry please, before she goes.”
She was filled with sudden determination to unravel this mystery. She might be acting disloyally to her husband, but she adjusted any fear she may have had on the score with the thought that she might also be helping him. The maid returned in a few minutes and ushered in a girl.
Yes, it was the girl she had seen on her wedding night. She stood now, framed in the doorway, watching her hostess with frank curiosity.
“Won’t you come in?” said Edith. “Have you had any dinner?”
“Thank you very much,” said the girl, “we do not take dinner, but I had a very good tea.”
“Will you sit down for a little while?”
With a graceful inclination of her head the girl accepted the invitation.
Her voice was free from the foreign accent which Edith had expected. She was indubitably English, and there was a refinement in her tone which Edith had not expected to meet.
“I suppose you wonder why I have sent for you?” asked Edith Standerton.
The girl showed two rows of white, even teeth in a smile.
“When people send for me,” she said demurely, “it is either to pay me for my music, or to bribe me to desist!”
There was frank merriment in her eyes, her smile lit up the face and changed its whole aspect.
“I am doing both,” said Edith, “and I also want to ask you something. Do you know my husband?”
“Mr. Standerton,” said the girl, and nodded. “Yes, I have seen him, and I have played to him.”
“Do you remember a night in June,” asked Edith, her heart beating faster at the memory, “when you came under this window and played”—she hesitated—“a certain tune?”
The girl nodded.
“Why, yes,” she said in surprise, “of course I remember that night of all nights.”
“Why of all nights?” asked Edith quickly.
“Well, you see as a rule my grandfather plays for Mr. Standerton, and that night he was ill. He caught a bad chill on Derby Day,—we were wet through by the storm, for we were playing at Epsom—and I had to come here and deputise for him. I did not want to go out a bit that night,” she confessed with a bitter laugh, “and I hate the tune; but it was all so mysterious and so romantic.”
“Just tell me what was ‘mysterious’ and what was ‘romantic,’ ” said Edith.
The coffee came in at that moment, and she poured a cup for her visitor.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“May Wing,” said the girl.
“Now tell me, May, all you know,” said Edith, as she passed the coffee, “and please believe it is not out of curiosity that I ask you.”
“I will tell you everything,” said the girl, nodding. “I remember that day particularly because I had been to the Academy of Music to take my lesson—you would not think we could afford that, but granny absolutely insists upon it. I got back home rather tired. Grandfather was lying down on the couch. We live at Hoxton. He seemed a little troubled. ‘May,’ he said, ‘I want you to do something for me to-night.’ Of course, I was quite willing and happy to do it.”
The girl stopped suddenly.
“Why, how extraordinary,” she said, “I believe I have got proof in my pocket of all that I say.”
She had hanging from her waist a little bag of the same material as her dress, and this she opened and searched inside.
She brought out an envelope.
“I will not show you this yet,” she said, “but I will tell you what happened. Grandfather, as I was saying, was very troubled, and he asked me if I would do something for him, knowing of course that I would.
“ ‘I have had a letter which I cannot make head or tail of,’ he said, and he showed me this letter.”
The girl held out the envelope.
Edith took it and removed the card inside.
“Why, this is my husband’s writing!” she cried.
“Yes,” nodded the girl.
It bore the postmark of Doncaster, and the letter was brief. It was addressed to the old musician, and ran:—
“Enclosed you will find a postal order for one pound. On receipt of this go to the house of Mr. Standerton between the hours of half-past seven and eight o’clock and play Rubenstein’s ‘Melody in F.’ Ascertain if he is at home, and if he is not return the next night and play the same tune at the same hour.”
That was all.
“I cannot understand it,” said Edith, puzzled. “What does it mean?”
The girl musician smiled.
“I should like to know what it meant too. You see, I am as curious as you, and think it is a failing which all women share.”
“And you do not know why this was sent?”
“No.”
“Or what is its meaning?”
Again the girl shook her head.
Edith looked at the envelope and examined the postmark.
It was dated May the twenty-fourth.
“May the twenty-fourth,” she repeated to herself. “Just wait one moment,” she said, and ran upstairs to her bedroom.
Feverishly she unlocked her bureau and took out the red-covered diary in which she had inscribed the little events of her life in Portland Square. She turned to May the twenty-fourth. There were only two entries. The first had to do with the arrival of a new dress but the second was very emphatic:—
“G. S. came at seven o’clock and stayed to dinner. Was very absent-minded and worried apparently. He left at ten. Had a depressing evening.”
She looked at the envelope again.
“Doncaster, 7.30,” it said.
So the letter had been posted a hundred and eighty miles away half an hour after he had arrived in Portland Square.
She went back to the dining-room bewildered, but she controlled her agitation in the presence of the girl.
“I must really patronise one of the arts,” she smiled.
She took a half-sovereign from her purse and handed it to May.
“Oh, really,” protested the little musician.
“No, take it, please. You have given me a great deal to think about. Has Mr. Standerton ever referred to this incident since?”
“Never,” said the girl. “I have never seen him since except once when I was on the top of an omnibus.”
A few minutes later the girl left.
Here was food for imagination, sufficient to occupy her mind, thought Edith.
“What did it mean?” she asked, “what mystery was behind all this?”
Now that she recalled the circumstances, she remembered that Gilbert had been terribly distrait that night; he was nervous, she had noticed his hand shaking, and had remarked to her mother upon his extraordinary absent-mindedness.
And if he had expected the musician to call, and if he himself had specified what tune should be played, why had its playing produced so terrible an effect upon him? He was no poseur.
There was nothing theatrical in his temperament.
He was a musician, and loved music as he loved nothing else in the world save her!
She thought of that reservation with some tenderness.
He had loved her then, whatever might be his feelings now, and the love of a strong man does not easily evaporate, nor is it destroyed at a word.
Since their marriage his piano had not been opened. He had been a subscriber to almost every musical event in London, yet he had not attended a single concert, not once visited the opera.
With the playing of the “Melody in F” it seemed to her there had ended one precious period of his life.
She had suggested once that they should go to a concert which all musical London was attending.
“Perhaps you would like to go,” he had suggested briefly. “I am afraid I shall be rather busy that night.” This, after he had told her not once, but a score of times that music expressed to him every message and every emotion in language clearer than the printed word.
What did it mean? She was seized with a sudden energy, a sudden desire for knowledge—she wanted to share a greater portion of his life. What connection had this melody with the sudden change that had come to him? What association had it with the adoption of this strenuous life of his lately? What had it to do with his resignation from the Foreign Office and from his clubs?
She was certain there must be some connection, and she was determined to discover what.
As she was in the dark she could not help him. She knew instinctively that to ask him would be of little use. He was of the type who preferred to play a lone hand.
She was his wife, she owed him something. She had brought unhappiness into his life, and she could do no less than strive to help him. She would want money.
She sat down and wrote a little note to her mother. She would take the three hundred pounds which were due from the broker; she even went so far as to hint that if this matter were not promptly settled by her parent she herself would see Mr. Warrell and conclude negotiations.
She had read in the morning paper the advertisement of a private detective agency, and for a while she was inclined to engage a man. But what special qualifications did private detectives have that she herself did not possess? It required no special training to use one’s brains and to exercise one’s logical faculties.
She had found a mission in life—the solution of this mystery which surrounded her husband like a cloud. She found herself feeling cheerful at the prospect of the work to which she had set her hand.
“You should find yourself an occupation,” Gilbert had said in his hesitating fashion.
She smiled, and wondered exactly what he would think if he knew the occupation she had found.
* * * *
The little house in Hoxton which sheltered May and her grandfather was in a respectable little street in the main inhabited by the members of the artisan class. Small and humble as the dwelling was it was furnished in perfect taste. The furniture was old in the more valuable and more attractive sense of the word.
Old man Wing propped up in his arm-chair sat by a small fire in the room which served as kitchen and dining-room. May was busy with her sewing.
“My dear,” said the old man in his gentle voice. “I do not think you had better go out again to-night.”
“Why not, grandpa?” asked the girl without looking up from her work.
“Well, it is probably selfishness on my part,” he said, “but somehow I do not want to be left alone. I am expecting a visitor.”
“A visitor!”
Visitors were unusual at No. 9 Pexton Street, Hoxton. The only visitor they knew was the rent man who called with monotonous regularity every Monday morning.
“Yes,” said her grandfather hesitatingly, “I think you remember the gentleman; you saw him some time ago.”
“Not Mr. Standerton?”
The old man shook his head.
“No, not Mr. Standerton,” he said, “but you will recall how at Epsom a rather nice man helped you out of a crowd after a race?”
“I remember,” she said.
“His name is Wallis,” said the old man, “and I met him by accident to-day when I was shopping.”
“Wallis,” she repeated.
Old Wing was silent for a while, then he asked—
“Do you think, my dear, we could take a lodger?”
“Oh, no,” protested the girl. “Please not!”
“I find the rent rather heavy,” said her grandfather, shaking his head, “and this Mr. Wallis is a quiet sort of person and not likely to give us any trouble.”
Still the girl was not satisfied.
“I would rather we didn’t,” she said. “I am quite sure we can earn enough to keep the house going without that kind of assistance. Lodgers are nuisances. I do not suppose Mrs. Gamage would like it.”
Mrs. Gamage was the faded neighbour who came in every morning to help straighten the house.
The girl saw the old man’s face fall and went round to him, putting her arm around his shoulder.
“Do not bother, grandpa dear,” she said, “if you want a lodger you shall have one. I think it would be rather nice to have somebody in the house who could talk to you when I am out.”
There was a knock at the door.
“That must be our visitor,” she said, and went to open it. She recognised the man who stood in the doorway.
“May I come in?” he asked. “I wanted to see your grandfather on a matter of business. I suppose you are Miss Wing.”
She nodded.
“Come in,” she said, and led the way to the kitchen.
“I will not keep you very long,” said Mr. Wallis. “No, thank you, I will stand while I am here. I want to find a quiet lodging for a friend of mine. At least,” he went on, “he is a man in whom I am rather interested, a very quiet sobersides individual who will be out most of the day, and possibly out most of the night too.” He smiled. “He is a——” He hesitated. “He is a taxi-cab driver, to be exact,” he said, “though he does not want this fact to be well known because he has seen—er—better days.”
“We have only a very small room we can give your friend,” said May, “perhaps you would like to see it.”
She took him up to the spare bedroom which they had used on very rare occasions for the accommodation of the few visitors who had been their guests. The room was neat and clean, and George Wallis nodded approvingly.
“I should like nothing better than this for myself,” he said.
He himself suggested a higher price than she asked, and insisted upon paying a month in advance.
“I have told the man to call, he ought to be here by now; if you do not mind, I will wait for him.”
It was not a long wait, for in a few minutes there arrived the new lodger. He was a burly man with a heavy black beard, clipped short, and the fact that he was somewhat taciturn and short of speech rather enhanced his value as a lodger than otherwise.
Wallis took farewell of the old man and his grand-daughter, and accompanied by the man, whose name was given somewhat unpromisingly as Smith, he walked to the end of the street.
He had something to say, and that something was important.
“I have got you this place, Smithy,” he said, as they walked slowly towards Hoxton High Street, “because it is quiet and fairly safe. The people are respected, and nobody will bother you.”
“They are not likely to worry me in any way, are they?” said the man addressed as Smith.
“Not at present,” replied the other, “but I do not know exactly how things are going to develop. I am worried.”
“What are you worried about?”
George Wallis laughed a little helplessly.
“Why do you ask such stupid questions?” he said with good-natured irritation. “Don’t you realise what has happened? Somebody knows our game.”
“Well, why not drop it?” asked the other quietly.
“How can we drop it? My dear good chap, though in twelve months we have accumulated a store of movable property sufficiently valuable to enable us all to retire upon, there is not one of us who is willing at this moment to cut out—it would take us twelve months to get rid of the loot,” he said thoughtfully.
“I do not exactly know where it is,” said Smith with a little smile.
“Nobody knows that but me,” replied Wallis with a little frown, “that is the worrying part of it. I feel the whole responsibility upon me. Smithy, we are being really watched.”
The other smiled.
“That isn’t unusual,” he said. But Wallis was very serious.
“Whom do you suspect?” he asked.
The other did not answer for a moment.
“I do not suspect, I know,” he said. “A few months ago, when Calli and I were doing a job in Hatton Garden we were interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious gentleman, who watched me open the safe and disappeared immediately afterwards. At that time he did not seem to be particularly hostile or have any ulterior motive in view. Now, for some reason which is best known to himself, he is working against us. That is the man we have got to find.”
“But how?”
“Put an advertisement in the paper,” said the other sarcastically: “Will the gentleman who dogs Mr. Wallis kindly reveal his identity, and no further action will be taken.”
“But seriously!” said the other.
“We have got to discover who he is, there must be some way of trapping him; but the only thing to do, and I must do it for my own protection, is to get you all together and share out. We had better meet.”
Smith nodded.
“When?”
“To-night,” said Wallis. “Meet me at the.…”
He mentioned the name of a restaurant near Regent Street.
It was, curiously enough, the very restaurant where Gilbert Standerton invariably dined alone.
CHAPTER X.
THE NECKLACE
Mrs. Cathcart was considerably surprised to receive an invitation to the dinner. She had that morning sent her daughter a cheque for three hundred pounds which she had received from her broker, but as their letters had crossed, one event had no connection with the other.
She did not immediately decide to accept the invitation, she was not sure as to the terms on which she desired to remain with her new son-in-law.
She was, however (whatever might be her faults), a good strategist, and there was nothing to be gained by declining the invitation, and there might be some advantage in accepting.
She was surprised to meet Mr. Warrell, surprised and a little embarrassed; but now that her daughter knew everything there was no reason in the world why she should feel uncomfortable.
She took him in charge, as was her wont, from the moment she met him in the little drawing-room at the St. John’s Wood house.
It was a pleasant dinner. Gilbert made a perfect host, he seemed to have revived within himself something of the old gay spirit. Warrell, remembering all that Mrs. Cathcart had told him, was on the qui vive to discover some evidence of dissension between husband and wife, the more anxious, perhaps, since he was before everything a professional man, to find justification for Mrs. Cathcart’s suggestion, that all was not going well with Gilbert.
Leslie Frankfort, a member of the party, had been questioned by his partner without the elder man eliciting any information which might help to dispel the doubt that was in Warrell’s mind.
Leslie Frankfort, that cheerful youth, was as much in the dark as his partner. It gave him some satisfaction to discover that at any rate there was no immediate prospect of ruin in his friend’s ménage.
The dinner was perfect, the food rare and chosen by an epicure, which indeed it was, as Gilbert had assisted his wife to prepare the menu.
The talk drifted idly, as talk does, at such a dinner party, around the topics which men and women were discussing at a thousand other dinner tables in England, and in the natural course of events it turned upon the startling series of burglaries that had been committed recently in London. That the talk should take this drift was more natural, perhaps, because Mrs. Cathcart had very boldly introduced the subject with reference to the burglary at Warrell’s.
“No, indeed,” said Mr. Warrell, shaking his head, “I regret to say we have no clue. The police have the matter in hand, but I’m afraid we shall never find the man, or men, who perpetrated the crime.”
“I don’t suppose they would be of much service to you if you found them,” said Gilbert quietly.
“I don’t know,” demurred the other. “We might possibly get the jewels back.”
Gilbert Standerton laughed, but stopped in the middle of it.
“Jewels?” he said.
“Don’t you remember, Gilbert?” Leslie broke in. “I told you that we had a necklace in the safe, the property of a client, one of those gambling ladies who patronise us.”
A warning glance from his partner arrested him. The gambling lady herself was rather red, and shot a malevolent glance at the indiscreet young man.
“The necklace was mine,” she said acidly.
“Oh!” said Leslie, and found the conversation of no great interest to him.
Gilbert did not smile at his friend’s embarrassment.
“A necklace,” he repeated, “how curious—yours?”
“Mine,” repeated Mrs. Cathcart. “I placed it with Warrell’s for security. Precious fine security it proved,” she added.
Warrell was all apologies. He was embarrassed for more reasons than one. He was very annoyed indeed with the indiscreet youth who owed his preponderant interest in the firm the more by reason of his dead father’s shares in the business than to any extent to his intelligence or his usefulness.
“Exactly what kind of necklace was it?” continued Gilbert. “I did not see a description.”
“No description was given,” said Mr. Warrell, coming to the relief of his client, whom he knew from infallible signs was fast losing her temper.
“We wished to keep the matter quiet, so that it should not get into the papers.”
Edith tactfully turned the conversation, and in a few minutes they were deep in the discussion of a question which has never failed to excite great interest—the abstract problem of the church.
Mrs. Cathcart, it may be remarked in passing, was a churchwoman of some standing, a leader amongst a certain set, and an extreme ritualist. Add to this element the broad Nonconformity of Mr. Warrell, the frank scepticism of Leslie, and there were all the ingredients for an argument, which in less refined circles might develop to a sanguinary conclusion.
Edith at least was relieved, however drastic the remedy might be, and was quite prepared to disestablish the Church of Wales, or if necessary the Church of England, rather than see the folly of her mother exposed.
Despite argument, dogmatism of Mrs. Cathcart, philippic of Leslie, and the good-natured tolerance of Mr. Warrell, this latter a most trying attitude to combat, the dinner ended pleasantly, and they adjourned to the little drawing-room upstairs.
“I’m afraid I shall have to leave you,” said Gilbert.
It was nearly ten o’clock, and he had already warned his wife of an engagement he had made for a later hour.
“I believe old Gilbert is a journalist in these days,” said Leslie. “I saw you the other night in Fleet Street, didn’t I?”
“No,” replied Gilbert shortly.
“Then it must have been your double,” said the other.
Edith had not followed the party upstairs. Just before dinner Gilbert had asked her, with some hesitation, to make him up a packet of sandwiches.
“I may be out the greater part of the night,” he said. “A man wants me to motor down to Brighton to meet somebody.”
“Will you be out all night?” she had asked, a little alarmed.
He shook his head.
“No, I shall be back by four,” he said.
She might have thought it was an unusual hour to meet people, but she made no comment.
As her little party had gone upstairs she had remembered the sandwiches, and went down into the kitchen to see if cook had cut and laid them ready.
She wrapped them up for him and packed them into a little flat sandwich case she had, and then made her way back to the hall.
His coat was hanging on a rack, and she had to slip them into the pocket. There was a newspaper in the way; she pulled it out, and there was something else, something loose and uneven.
She smiled at his untidiness, and put in her hand to remove the debris.
Her face changed.
What was it?
Her fingers closed round the object in the bottom of the pocket, and she drew it out.
There in the palm of her hand, clearly revealed by the electric lamp above her head, shone her diamond necklace!
For a moment the little hall swayed, but she steadied herself with an effort.
Her necklace!
There was no doubt—she turned it over with trembling fingers.
How had he got it? Where did it come from?
A thought had struck her, but it was too horrible for her to give it expression.
Gilbert a burglar! It was absurd. She tried to smile, but failed. Almost every night he had been out, every night in the week in which this burglary had been committed.
She heard a footstep on the stairs, and thrust the necklace into the bosom of her dress.
It was Gilbert. He did not notice her face, then—
“Gilbert,” she said, and something in her voice warned him.
He turned, peering down at her.
“What is wrong?” he asked.
“Will you come into the dining-room for a moment?” she said.
Her voice sounded far away to her.
She felt it was not she who was speaking, but some third person.
He opened the door of the dining-room and walked in. The table was spread with the debris of the dinner which had just been concluded. The rosy glow of the overhead lamp fell upon a pretty chaos of flowers and silver and glass.
He closed the door behind him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“This,” she replied quietly, and drew the necklace from her dress.
He looked at it. Not a muscle of his face moved.
“That?” he said. “Well, what is that?”
“My necklace!”
“Your necklace,” he repeated dully. “Is that the necklace that your mother lost?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“How very curious.”
He reached out his hand and took it from her and examined the diamond pendant.
“And that is your necklace,” he said. “Well, that is a remarkable coincidence.”
“Where did you get it?” she asked.
He did not make any reply. He was looking at her with a stony stare in which there was neither expression nor encouragement for speculation.
“Where did I get it?” he repeated calmly. “Who told you that I’d got it?”
“I found it in your pocket,” she said breathlessly. “Oh, Gilbert, there is no use denying that you had it there or you knew it was there. Where did you get it?”
Another pause, then came the answer—
“I found it.”
It was lame and unconvincing, and he knew it.
She repeated the question.
“I am not prepared to tell you,” he said calmly. “You think I stole it, I suppose? You probably imagine that I am a burglar?”
He smiled, but the lips that curved in laughter were hard.
“I can see that in your eyes,” he went on. “You explain my absence from home, my retirement from the Foreign Office, by the fact that I have taken up a more lucrative profession.”
He laughed aloud.
“Well, I have,” he said. “It is not exactly burglary. I assure you,” he went on with mock solemnity, “that I have never burgled a safe in my life. I give you my word of honour that I have never stolen a single article of any——” He stopped himself—he might say too much.
But Edith grasped at the straw he offered her.
“Oh, you do mean that, don’t you?” she said eagerly, and laid her two hands on his breast. “You really mean it? I know it is stupid of me, foolish and horribly disloyal—common of me, anything you like, to suspect you of so awful a thing, but it did seem—it did, didn’t it?”
“It did,” he agreed gravely.
“Won’t you tell me how it came into your possession?” she pleaded.
“I tell you I found it—that is true. I had no intention——” He stopped again. “It was—I picked it up in the road, in a country lane.”
“But weren’t you awfully surprised to find it, and didn’t you tell the police?”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I was not surprised, and I did not tell the police. I intended restoring it, because, after all, jewels are of no value to me, are they?”
“I don’t understand you, Gilbert.” She shook her head, a little bewildered. “Nothing is of any use except what belongs to you, is it?”
“That depends,” he said calmly. “But in this particular case I assure you that I brought this home to-night with the intention of putting it into a small box and addressing it to the Chief Commissioner of Police. You may believe that or not. That is why I thought it so extraordinary when you were talking at dinner that your mother should have lost a necklace, and that I should have found one.”
They stood looking at one another, he weighing the necklace on the palm of his hand, tossing it up and down mechanically.
“What are we going to do with it now?” she asked. She was in a quandary. “I hardly know how to advise.” She hesitated. “Suppose you carry out your present intention and send it to the police.
“Oh!” she remembered with a little move of dismay, “I have practically stolen three hundred pounds.”
“Three hundred pounds!”
He looked at the jewel.
“It’s worth more than three hundred pounds.”
In a few words she explained how the jewel came to be lost, and how it came to be deposited in the hands of Warrell’s.
“I’m glad to hear that your mother is the culprit. I was afraid you’d been gambling.”
“Would that worry you?” she asked quickly.
“A little,” he said; “it’s enough for one member of a family to gamble.”
“Do you gamble very much, Gilbert?” she asked seriously.
“A little,” he said.
“Not a little,” she corrected. “Stock Exchange business is gambling.”
“I am trying to make money for you,” he said brusquely.
It was the most brutal thing he had said to her in her short period of married life, and he saw he had hurt her.
“I am sorry,” he said gently. “I know I am a brute, but I did not mean to hurt you. I was just protesting in my heart against the unfairness of things. Will you take this, or shall I?”
“I will take it,” she said. “But won’t you tell the police where you found it? Possibly they might find the proceeds of other robberies near by.”
“I think not,” he replied with a little smile. “I have no desire to incur the anger of this particular gang. I am satisfied in my mind that it is one of the most powerful and one of the most unscrupulous in existence. It is nearly half-past ten,” he said; “I must fly.”
He held out his hand, and she took it. She held it for a moment longer than was her wont.
“Good-bye,” she said. “Good luck, whatever your business may be.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She went slowly back to her guests. It did not make the position any easier to understand. She believed her husband, and yet there was a certain reservation in what he had told her, a reservation which said as plainly as his guarded words could tell that there was much more he could have said had he been inclined.
She did not doubt his word when he told her that he had never stolen from—from whom was he going to say? She was more determined than ever to solve this mystery, and after her guests had gone she was busily engaged in writing letters. She was hardly in bed that night before she heard his foot on the stairs and listened.
He knocked at her door as he passed.
“Good-night,” he said.
“Good-night,” she replied.
She heard his door close gently, and she waited for half an hour until she heard the click of his electric switch which told her that he was in bed, and that his light was extinguished.
Then she stole softly out of bed, wrapped her dressing gown round her, and went softly down the stairs. Perhaps his coat was hanging in the hall.
It was a wild, fantastic idea of hers that he might possibly have brought some further evidence that would help her in her search for the truth, but the pockets were empty.
She felt something wet upon the sleeve, and gathered that it was raining. She went back to her room, closed the door noiselessly, and went to the window to look out into the street. It was a fine morning, and the streets were dry. She saw her hands. They were smeared with blood!
She ran down the stairs again and turned on the light in the hall.
Yes, there it was on his sleeve. There were little drops of blood on the stair carpet. She could trace him all the way up the stairs by this. She went straight to his room and knocked.
He answered instantly.
“Who is that?”
“It is I. I want to see you.”
“I am rather tired,” he said.
“Please let me in. I want to see you.”
She tried the door, but it was locked. Then she heard the bed creak as he moved. An instant later the bolt was slipped, and the light shone through the fanlight over the door.
He was almost fully dressed, she observed.
“What is the matter with your arm?” she asked.
It was carefully bandaged.
“I hurt it. It is nothing very much.”
“How did you hurt it?” she asked impatiently.
She was nearing the end of her resources. She wanted him to say that it had happened in a taxi-cab smash or one of the street accidents to which city dwellers are liable, but he did not explain.
She asked to see the wound. He was unwilling, but she insisted. At last he unwrapped the bandage, and showed an ugly little gash on the forearm. It was too rough to be the clean-cut wound of a knife or of broken glass.
There was a second wound about the size of a sixpence near the elbow.
“That looks like a bullet wound,” she said, and pointed. “It has glanced along your arm, and has caught you again near the elbow.”
He did not speak.
She procured warm water from the bathroom and bathed it, found a cool emollient in her room and dressed it as well as she could.
She did not again refer to the circumstances under which the injury had been sustained. This was not the time nor the place to discuss that.
“There is an excellent nurse spoilt in you,” he said when she had finished.
“I am afraid there is an excellent man spoilt in you,” she answered in a low voice, “and I am rather inclined to think that I have done the spoiling.”
“Please get that out of your head altogether,” he said almost roughly. “A man is what he makes himself: you know the tag—the evil you do by two and two you answer for one by one; and even if you had any part in the influencing of my life for evil, I am firstly and lastly responsible.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said she.
She had made him a little sling in which to rest his arm.
“You married me because you loved me, because you gave to me all that a right-thinking woman would hold precious and sacred and because you expected me to give something in return. I have given you nothing. I humiliated you at the very outset by telling you why I had married you. You have the dubious satisfaction of knowing that I bear your name. You have, perhaps, half a suspicion that you live with one who is everlastingly critical of your actions and your intentions. Have I no responsibilities?”
There was a long silence, then she said—
“Whatever you wish me to do I will always do.”
“I wish you to be happy, that is all,” he replied.
His voice was of the same hard, metallic tone which she had noted before.
She flushed a little. It had been an effort for her to say what she had, and he had rebuffed her. He was within his rights, she thought.
She left him, and did not see him till the morning, when they met at breakfast. They exchanged a few words of greeting, and both turned their attention to their newspapers. Edith read hers in silence, read the one column which meant so much to her from end to end twice, then she laid the paper down.
“I see,” she said, “that our burglars rifled the Bank of the Northern Provinces last night.”
“So I read,” he said, without raising his eyes from his paper.
“And that one of them was shot by the armed guard of the bank.”
“I’ve also seen that,” said her husband.
“Shot,” she repeated, and looked at his bandaged arm.
He nodded.
“I think my paper is a later edition than yours,” he said gently. “The man that was shot was killed. They found his body in a taxi-cab. His name is not given, but I happen to know that it was a very pleasant florid gentleman named Persh. Poor fellow,” he mused, “it was poetic justice.”