THE MELODY OF
DEATH

BY
EDGAR WALLACE

Author of
“Angel Esquire,” “The Four Just Men,” “The
Green Archer,” etc., etc.

LINCOLN MAC VEAGH
THE DIAL PRESS
NEW YORK - MCMXXVII

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. THE AMATEUR SAFE SMASHER

CHAPTER II. SUNSTAR’S DERBY

CHAPTER III. GILBERT LEAVES HURRIEDLY

CHAPTER IV. THE “MELODY IN F”

CHAPTER V. THE MAN WHO DESIRED WEALTH

CHAPTER VI. THE SAFE AGENCY

CHAPTER VII. THE BANK SMASHER

CHAPTER VIII. THE WIFE WHO DID NOT LOVE

CHAPTER IX. EDITH MEETS THE PLAYER

CHAPTER X. THE NECKLACE

CHAPTER XI. THE FOURTH MAN

CHAPTER XII. THE PLACE WHERE THE LOOT WAS STORED

CHAPTER XIII. THE MAKER OF WILLS

CHAPTER XIV. THE STANDERTON DIAMONDS

CHAPTER XV. THE TALE THE DOCTOR TOLD

CHAPTER XVI. BRADSHAW

The Melody of Death

CHAPTER I.
THE AMATEUR SAFE SMASHER

On the night of May 27th, 1925, the office of Gilderheim, Pascoe and Company, diamond merchants, of Little Hatton Garden, presented no unusual appearance to the patrolling constable who examined the lock and tried the door in the ordinary course of his duty. Until nine o’clock in the evening the office had been occupied by Mr. Gilderheim and his head clerk, and a plain clothes officer, whose duty it was to inquire into unusual happenings had deemed that the light in the window on the first floor fell within his scope, and had gone up to discover the reason for its appearance. The 27th was a Saturday, and it is usual for the offices in Hatton Garden to be clear of clerks and their principals by three at the latest.

Mr. Gilderheim, a pleasant gentleman, had been relieved to discover that the knock which brought him to the door, gripping a revolver in his pocket in case of accidents, produced no more startling adventure than a chat with a police officer who was known to him. He explained that he had to-day received a parcel of diamonds from an Amsterdam house, and was classifying the stones before leaving for the night, and with a few jocular remarks on the temptation which sixty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds offered to the unscrupulous “night of darkness,” the officer left.

At nine-forty Mr. Gilderheim locked up the jewels in his big safe, before which an electric light burnt day and night, and accompanied by his clerk, left No. 93 Little Hatton Garden and walked in the direction of Holborn.

The constable on point duty bade them good-night, and the plain clothes officer, who was then at the Holborn end of the thoroughfare, exchanged a word or two.

“You will be on duty all night?” asked Mr. Gilderheim as his clerk hailed a cab.

“Yes, sir,” said the officer.

“Good!” said the merchant. “I’d like you to keep a special eye upon my place. I am rather nervous about leaving so large a sum in the safe.”

The officer smiled.

“I don’t think you need worry, sir,” he said, and after the cab containing Mr. Gilderheim had driven off he walked back to No. 93.

But in that brief space of time between the diamond merchant leaving and the return of the detective many things had happened. Scarcely had Gilderheim reached the detective than two men walked briskly along the thoroughfare from the other end. Without hesitation the first turned into No. 93, opened the door with a key, and passed in. The second man followed. There was no hesitation, nothing furtive in their movements. They might have been lifelong tenants of the house, so confident were they in every action.

Not half a minute after the second man had entered a third came from the same direction, turned into the building, unlocked the door with that calm confidence which had distinguished the action of the first comer, and went in.

Three minutes later two of the three were upstairs.

With extraordinary expedition one had produced two small iron bottles from his pockets and had deftly fixed the rubber tubes and adjusted the little blow-pipe of his lamp, and the second had spread out on the floor a small kit of tools of delicate temper and beautiful finish.

Neither man spoke. They lay flat on the ground, making no attempt to extinguish the light which shone before the safe. They worked in silence for some little while, then the stouter of the two remarked, looking up at the reflector fixed at an angle to the ceiling and affording a view of the upper part of the safe to the passer-by in the street below—

“Even the mirrors do not give us away, I suppose?”

The second burglar was a slight, young-looking man with a shock of hair that suggested the musician.

He shook his head.

“Unless all the rules of optics have been specially reversed for the occasion,” he said with just a trace of a foreign accent, “we cannot possibly be seen.”

“I am relieved,” said the first.

He half whistled, half hummed a little tune to himself as he plied the hissing flame to the steel door.

He was carefully burning out the lock, and had no doubt in his mind that he would succeed, for the safe was an old-fashioned one.

No further word was exchanged for half an hour. The man with the blow-pipe continued in his work, the other watching with silent interest, ready to play his part when the operation was sufficiently advanced.

At the end of half an hour the elder of the two wiped his streaming forehead with the back of his hand, for the heat which the flame gave back from the steel door was fairly trying.

“Why did you make such a row closing the door?” he asked. “You are not usually so careless, Calli.”

The other looked down at him in mild astonishment.

“I made no noise whatever, my dear George,” he said. “If you had been standing in the passage you could not have heard it; in fact, I closed the door as noiselessly as I opened it.”

The perspiring man on the ground smiled.

“That would be fairly noiseless,” he said.

“Why?” asked the other.

“Because I did not close it. You walked in after me.”

Something in the silence which greeted his words made him look up. There was a puzzled look upon his companion’s face.

“I opened the door with my own key,” said the younger man slowly.

“You opened——” The man called George frowned. “I do not understand you, Callidino. I left the door open, and you walked in after me; I went straight up the stairs, and you followed.”

Callidino looked at the other and shook his head.

“I opened the door myself with the key,” he said quietly. “If anybody came in after you—why, it is up to us, George, to see who it is.”

“You mean——?”

“I mean,” said the little Italian, “that it would be extremely awkward if there is a third gentleman present on this inconvenient occasion.”

“It would, indeed,” said the other.

“Why?”

Both men turned with a start, for the voice that asked the question without any trace of emotion was the voice of a third man, and he stood in the doorway screened from all possibility of observation from the window by the angle of the room.

He was dressed in an evening suit, and he carried a light overcoat across his arm.

What manner of man he was, and how he looked, they had no means of judging, for from his chin to his forehead his face was covered by a black mask.

“Please do not move,” he said, “and do not regard the revolver I am holding in the light of a menace. I merely carry it for self-defence, and you will admit that under the circumstances, and knowing the extreme delicacy of my position, I am fairly well justified in taking this precaution.”

George Wallis laughed a little under his breath.

“Sir,” he said, without shifting his position, “you may be a man after my own heart, but I shall know better when you have told me exactly what you want.”

“I want to learn,” said the stranger.

He stood there regarding the pair with obvious interest. The eyes which shone through the holes of the mask were alive and keen.

“Go on with your work, please,” he said. “I should hate to interrupt you.”

George Wallis picked up the blow-pipe and addressed himself again to the safe door. He was a most adaptable man, and the situation in which he found himself nonplussed had yet to occur.

“Since,” he said, “it makes absolutely no difference as to whether I leave off or whether I go on, if you are a representative of law and order, I may as well go on, because if you are not a representative of those two admirable, excellent and necessary qualities I might at least save half the swag with you.”

“You may save the lot,” said the man sharply. “I do not wish to share the proceeds of your robbery, but I want to know how you do it—that is all.”

“You shall learn,” said George Wallis, that most notorious of burglars, “and at the hands of an expert, I beg you to believe.”

“That I know,” said the other calmly.

Wallis went on with his task apparently undisturbed by this extraordinary interruption. The little Italian’s hands had twitched nervously, and here might have been trouble, but the strength of the other man, who was evidently the leader of the two, and his self-possession had heartened his companion to accept whatever consequences the presence of this man might threaten. It was the masked stranger who broke the silence.

“Isn’t it an extraordinary thing,” he said, “that whilst technical schools exist for teaching every kind of trade, art and craft, there is none which engage in teaching the art of destruction. Believe me, I am very grateful that I have had this opportunity of sitting at the feet of a master.”

His voice was not unpleasant, but there was a certain hardness which was not in harmony with the flippant tone he adopted.

The man on the floor went on with his work for a little while, then he said without turning his head—

“I am anxious to know exactly how you got in.”

“I followed close behind you,” said the masked man. “I knew there would be a reasonable interval between the two of you. You see,” he went on, “you have been watching this office for the greater part of a week; one of you has been on duty practically every night. You rented a small office higher up this street which offered a view of these premises. I gathered that you had chosen to-night because you brought your gas with you this morning. You were waiting in the dark hall-way of the building in which your office is situated, one of you watching for the light to go out and Mr. Gilderheim depart. When he had gone, you, sir”—he addressed the man on the floor—“came out immediately, your companion did not follow so soon. Moreover, he stopped to pick up a small bundle of letters which had apparently been dropped by some careless person, and since these letters included two sealed packets such as the merchants of Hatton Garden send to their clients, I was able to escape the observation of the second man and keep reasonably close to you.”

Callidino laughed softly.

“That is true,” he said, with a nod to the man on the floor. “It was very clever. I suppose you dropped the packet?”

The masked man inclined his head.

“Please go on,” he said, “do not let me interrupt you.”

“What is going to happen when I have finished?” asked George, still keeping his face to the safe.

“As far as I am concerned, nothing. Just as soon as you have got through your work, and have extracted whatever booty there is to be extracted, I shall retire.”

“You want your share, I suppose?”

“Not at all,” said the other calmly. “I do not want my share by any means. I am not entitled to it. My position in society prevents me from going farther down the slippery path than to connive at your larceny.”

“Felony,” corrected the man on the floor.

“Felony,” agreed the other.

He waited until without a sound the heavy door of the safe swung open and George had put his hand inside to extract the contents, and then, without a word, he passed through the door, closing it behind him.

The two men sat up tensely and listened. They heard nothing more until the soft thud of the outer door told them that their remarkable visitor had departed.

They exchanged glances—interest on the one face, amusement on the other.

“That is a remarkable man,” said Callidino.

The other nodded.

“Most remarkable,” he said, “and more remarkable will it be if we get out of Hatton Garden to-night with the loot.”

It would seem that the “more than most” remarkable happening of all actually occurred, for none saw the jewel thieves go, and the smashing of Gilderheim’s jewel safe provided an excellent alternative topic for conversation to the prospect of Sunstar for the Derby.

CHAPTER II.
SUNSTAR’S DERBY

There it was again!

Above the babel of sound, the low roar of voices, soft and sorrowful, now heard, now lost, a vagrant thread of gold caught in the drab woof of shoddy life gleaming and vanishing.… Gilbert Standerton sat tensely straining to locate the sound.

It was the “Melody in F” that the unseen musician played.

“There’s going to be a storm.”

Gilbert did not hear the voice. He sat on the box-seat of the coach, clasping his knees, the perspiration streaming from his face.

There was something tragic, something a little terrifying in his pose. The profile turned to his exasperated friend was a perfect one—forehead high and well-shaped, the nose a little long, perhaps, the chin strong and resolute.

Leslie Frankfort, looking up at the unconscious dreamer, was reminded of the Dante of convention, though Dante never wore a top-hat or found a Derby Day crowd so entirely absorbing.

“There’s going to be a storm.”

Leslie climbed up the short step-ladder, and swung himself into the seat by Gilbert’s side.

The other awoke from his reverie with a start.

“Is there?” he asked, and wiped his forehead.

Yet as he looked around it was not the murky clouds banking up over Banstead that held his eye; it was this packed mass of men and women, these gay placards extolling loudly the honesty and the establishment of “the old firm,” the booths on the hill, the long succession of canvas screens which had been erected to advertise somebody’s whisky, the flimsy-looking stands on the far side of the course, the bustle, the pandemonium and the vitality of that vast, uncountable throng made such things as June thunderstorms of little importance.

“If you only knew how the low brows are pitying you,” said Leslie Frankfort, with good-natured annoyance, “you would not be posing for a picture of ‘The Ruined Gambler.’ My dear chap, you look for all the world, sitting up here with your long, ugly mug adroop, like a model for the coloured plate to be issued with the Christmas Number of the Anti-Gambling Gazette. I suppose they have a gazette.”

Gilbert laughed a little.

“These people interest me,” he said, rousing himself to speak. “Don’t you realise what they all mean? Every one of them with a separate and distinct individuality, every one with a hope or a fear hugged tight in his bosom, every one with the capacity for love, or hate, or sorrow. Look at that man!” he said, and pointed with his long, nervous finger.

The man he indicated stood in a little oasis of green. Hereabouts the people on the course had so directed their movements as to leave an open space, and in the centre stood a man of medium height, a black bowler on the back of his head, a long, thin cigar between his white, even teeth. He was too far away for Leslie to distinguish these particulars, but Gilbert Standerton’s imagination filled in the deficiencies of vision, for he had seen this man before.

As if conscious of the scrutiny, the man turned and came slowly towards the rails where the coach stood. He took the cigar from his mouth and smiled as he recognised the occupant of the box-seat.

“How do you do, sir?”

His voice sounded shrill and faint, as if an immeasurable distance separated them, but he was evidently shouting to raise his voice above the growling voices of the crowd. Gilbert waved his hand with a smile, and the man turned with a raise of his hat, and was swallowed up in a detachment of the crowd which came eddying about him.

“A thief,” said Gilbert, “on a fairly large scale—his name is Wallis; there are many Wallises here. A crowd is a terrible spectacle to the man who thinks,” he said half to himself.

The other glanced at him keenly.

“They’re terrible things to get through in a thunderstorm,” he said, practically. “I vote we go along and claim the car.”

Gilbert nodded.

He rose stiffly, like a man with cramp, and stepped slowly down the little ladder to the ground. They passed through the barrier and crossed the course, penetrated the little unsaddling enclosure, through the long passages where press-men, jockeys and stewards jostled one another every moment of race days, to the roadway without.

In the roped garage they found their car, and, more remarkable, their chauffeur.

The first flicker of blue lightning had stabbed twice to the Downs, and the heralding crash of thunder had reverberated through the charged air, when the car began to thread the traffic toward London. The storm, which had been brewing all the afternoon, broke with terrific fury over Epsom. The lightning was incessant, the rain streamed down in an almost solid wall of water, crash after crash of thunder deafened them.

The great throng upon the hill was dissolving as though it was something soluble; its edges frayed into long black streamers of hurrying people moving toward the three railway stations. It required more than ordinary agility to extricate the car from the chaos of charabancs and motor-cabs in which it found itself.

Standerton had taken his seat by the driver’s side, though the car was a closed one. He was a man quick to observe, and on the second flash he had seen the chauffeur’s face grow white and his lips twitching. A darkness almost as of night covered the heavens. The horizon about was rimmed with a dull, angry orange haze; so terrifying a storm had not been witnessed in England for many years.

The rain was coming down in sheets, but the young man by the chauffeur’s side paid no heed. He was watching the nervous hands of the man twist this way and that as the car made detour after detour to avoid the congested road.

Suddenly a jagged streak of light flicked before the car, and Standerton was deafened by an explosion more terrifying than any of the previous peals.

The chauffeur instinctively shrank back, his face white and drawn; his trembling hands left the wheel, and his foot released the pedal. The car would have come to a standstill, but for the fact that they were at the top of a declivity.

“My God!” he whimpered, “it’s awful. I can’t go on, sir.”

Gilbert Standerton’s hand was on the wheel, his neatly-booted foot had closed on the brake pedal.

“Get out of it!” he muttered. “Get over here, quick!”

The man obeyed. He moved shivering to his master’s place, his hands before his face, and Standerton slipped into the driver’s seat and threw in the clutch.

It was fortunate that he was a driver of extraordinary ability, but he needed every scrap of knowledge as he put the car to the slope which led to the lumpy Downs. As they jolted forward the downpour increased, the ground was running with water as though it had been recently flooded. The wheels of the car slipped and skidded over the greasy surface, but the man at the steering-wheel kept his head, and by and by he brought the big car slithering down a little slope on to the main way again. The road was sprinkled with hurrying, tramping people. He moved forward slowly, his horn sounding all the time, and then of a sudden the car stopped with a jerk.

“What is it?”

Leslie Frankfort had opened the window which separated the driver’s seat from the occupants of the car.

“There’s an old chap there,” said Gilbert, speaking over his shoulder, “would you mind taking him into the car? I’ll tell you why after.”

He pointed to two woe-begone figures that stood on the side of the road. They were of an old man and a girl; Leslie could not see their faces distinctly. They stood with their backs to the storm, one thin coat spread about them both.

Gilbert shouted something, and at his voice the old man turned. He had a beautiful face, thin, refined, intellectual; it was the face of an artist. His grey hair straggled over his collar, and under the cloak he clutched something, the care of which seemed to concern him more than his protection from the merciless downpour.

The girl at his side might have been seventeen, a solemn child, with great fearless eyes that surveyed the occupants of the car gravely. The old man hesitated at Gilbert’s invitation, but as he beckoned impatiently he brought the girl down to the road and Leslie opened the door.

“Jump in quickly,” he said. “My word, you’re wet!”

He slammed the door behind them, and they seated themselves facing him.

They were in a pitiable condition; the girl’s dress was soaked, her face was wet as though she had come straight from a bath.

“Take that cloak off,” said Leslie brusquely. “I’ve a couple of dry handkerchiefs, though I’m afraid you’ll want a bath towel.”

She smiled.

“It’s very kind of you,” she said. “We shall ruin your car.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Leslie cheerfully. “It’s not my car. Anyway,” he added, “when Mr. Standerton comes in he will make it much worse.”

He was wondering in his mind by what freakish inclination Standerton had called these two people to the refuge of his Limousine.

The old man smiled as he spoke, and his first words were an explanation.

“Mr. Standerton has always been very good to me,” he said gently, almost humbly.

He had a soft, well-modulated voice. Leslie Frankfort recognised that it was the voice of an educated man. He smiled. He was too used to meeting Standerton’s friends to be surprised at this storm-soddened street musician, for such he judged him to be by the neck of the violin which protruded from the soaked coat.

“You know him, do you?”

The old man nodded.

“I know him very well,” he said.

He took from under his coat the thing he had been carrying, and Leslie Frankfort saw that it was an old violin. The old man examined it anxiously, then with a sigh of relief he laid it across his knees.

“It’s not damaged, I hope?” asked Leslie.

“No, sir,” said the other; “I was greatly afraid that it was going to be an unfortunate ending to what has been a prosperous day.”

They had been playing on the Downs, and had reaped a profitable harvest.

“My grand-daughter also plays,” said the old man. “We do not as a rule care for these great crowds, but it invariably means money”—he smiled—“and we are not in a position to reject any opportunity which offers.”

They were now drawing clear of the storm. They had passed through Sutton, and had reached a place where the roads were as yet dry, when Gilbert stopped the car and handed the wheel to the shame-faced chauffeur.

“I’m very sorry, sir,” the man began.

“Oh, don’t bother,” smiled his employer, “one is never to be blamed for funking a storm. I used to be as bad until I got over it… there are worse things,” he added, half to himself.

The man thanked him with a muttered word, and Gilbert opened the door of the car and entered. He nodded to the old man and gave a quick smile to the girl.

“I thought I recognised you,” he said. “This is Mr. Springs,” he said, turning to Leslie. “He’s quite an old friend of mine. I’m sure when you have dined at St. John’s Wood you must have heard Springs’ violin under the dining-room window. It used to be a standing order, didn’t it, Mr. Springs?” he said. “By the way,” he asked suddenly, “were you playing——”

He stopped, and the old man, misunderstanding the purport of the question, nodded.

“After all,” said Gilbert, with a sudden change of manner, “it wouldn’t be humane to leave my private band to drown on Epsom Downs, to say nothing of the chance of his being struck by lightning.”

“Was there any danger?” asked Leslie in surprise.

Gilbert nodded.

“I saw one poor chap struck as I cleared the Downs,” he said; “there were a lot of people near him, so I didn’t trouble to stop. It was a terrifying experience.”

He looked back out of the little oval window behind.

“We shall have it again in London to-night,” he said, “but storms do not feel so dangerous in town as they do in the country. They’re not so alarming. Housetops are very merciful to the nervous.”

They took farewell of the old man and his grand-daughter at Balham, and then, as the car continued, Leslie turned with a puzzled look to his companion.

“You’re a wonderful man, Gilbert,” he said; “I can’t understand you. You described yourself only this morning as being a nervous wreck——”

“Did I say that?” asked the other dryly.

“Well, you didn’t admit it,” said Leslie, with an aggrieved air, “but it was a description which most obviously fitted you. And yet in the face of this storm, which I confess curled me up pretty considerably, you take the seat of your chauffeur and you push the car through it. Moreover, you are sufficiently collected to pick up an old man, when you had every excuse to leave him to his dismal fate.”

For a moment Gilbert made no reply; then he laughed a little bitterly.

“There are a dozen ways of being nervous,” he said, “and that doesn’t happen to be one of mine. The old man is an important factor in my life, though he does not know it—the very instrument of fate.”

He dropped his voice almost solemnly. Then he seemed to remember that the curious gaze of the other was upon him.

“I don’t know where you got the impression that I was a nervous wreck,” he said briefly. “It’s hardly the ideal condition for a man who is to be married this week.”

“That may be the cause, my dear chap,” said the other reflectively. “I know a lot of people who are monstrously upset at the prospect. There was Tuppy Jones who absolutely ran away—lost his memory, or some such newspaper trick.”

Gilbert smiled.

“I did the next worst thing to running away,” he said a little moodily. “I wanted the wedding postponed.”

“But why?” demanded the other. “I was going to ask you that this morning coming down, only it slipped my memory. Mrs. Cathcart told me she wouldn’t hear of it.”

Gilbert gave him no encouragement to continue the subject, but the voluble young man went on—

“Take what the gods give you, my son,” he said. “Here you are with a Foreign Office appointment, an Under-Secretaryship looming in the near future, a most charming and beautiful bride in prospect, rich——”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” said Gilbert sharply. “The idea is abroad all over London. Beyond my pay I have no money whatever. This car,” he said, as he saw the other’s questioning face, “is certainly mine—at least, it was a present from my uncle, and I don’t suppose he’ll want it returned before I sell it. Thank God it makes no difference to you,” he went on with that note of hardness still in his voice, “but I am half inclined to think that two-thirds of the friendships I have, and all the kindness which is from time to time shown to me, is based upon that delusion of riches. People think that I am my uncle’s heir.”

“But aren’t you?” gasped the other.

Gilbert shook his head.

“My uncle has recently expressed his intention of leaving the whole of his fortune to that admirable institution which is rendering such excellent service to the canine world—the Battersea Dogs’ Home.”

Leslie Frankfort’s jovial face bore an expression of tragic bewilderment.

“Have you told Mrs. Cathcart this?” he asked.

“Mrs. Cathcart!” replied the other in surprise. “No, I haven’t told her. I don’t think it’s necessary. After all,” he said with a smile, “Edith isn’t marrying me for money, she is pretty rich herself, isn’t she? Not that it matters,” he said hastily, “whether she’s rich or whether she’s poor.”

Neither of the two men spoke again for the rest of the journey, and at the corner of St. James’s Street Gilbert put his friend down.

He continued his way to the little house which he had taken furnished a year before, when marriage had only seemed the remotest of possibilities, when his worldly prospects had seemed much brighter than they were at present.

Gilbert Standerton was a member of one of those peculiar families which seem to be made up entirely of nephews. His uncle, the eccentric old Anglo-Indian, had charged himself with the boy’s future, and he had been mainly responsible for securing the post which Gilbert now held. More than this, he had made him his heir, and since he was a man who did nothing in secret, and was rather inclined to garrulity, the news of Gilbert’s good fortune was spread from one end of England to the other.

Then, a month before this story opens, had come like a bombshell a curt notification from his relative that he had deemed it advisable to alter the terms of his will, and that Gilbert might look for no more than the thousand pounds to which, in common with innumerable other nephews, he was entitled.

It was not a shock to Gilbert except that he was a little grieved with the fear that in some manner he had offended his fiery uncle. He had a too lively appreciation of the old man’s goodness to him to resent the eccentricity which would make him a comparatively poor man.

It would have considerably altered the course of his life if he had notified at least one person of the change in his prospects.

CHAPTER III.
GILBERT LEAVES HURRIEDLY

Gilbert was dressing for dinner when the storm came up over London. It had lost none of its intensity or strength. For an hour the street had glared fitfully in the blue lightning of the electrical discharges, and the house rocked with crash after crash of thunder.

He himself was in tune with the element, for there raged in his heart such a storm as shook the very foundations of his life. Outwardly there was no sign of distress. The face he saw in the shaving-glass was a mask, immobile and expressionless.

He sent his man to call a taxi-cab. The storm had passed over London, and only the low grumble of thunder could be heard when he came out on to the rain-washed streets. A few wind-torn wisps of cloud were hurrying at a great rate across the sky, stragglers endeavouring in frantic haste to catch up the main body.

He descended from his cab at the door of No. 274 Portland Square slowly and reluctantly. He had an unpleasant task to perform, as unpleasant to him, more unpleasant, indeed, than it could be to his future mother-in-law.

He did not doubt that the suspicion implanted in his mind by Leslie was unfair and unworthy.

He was ushered into the drawing-room, and found himself the solitary occupant. He looked at his watch.

“Am I very early, Cole?” he asked the butler.

“You are rather, sir,” said the man, “but I will tell Miss Cathcart you are here.”

Gilbert nodded. He strolled across to the window, and stood, his hands clasped behind him, looking out upon the wet street. He stood thus for five minutes, his head sunk forward on his breast, absorbed in thought. The opening of the door aroused him, and he turned to meet the girl who had entered.

Edith Cathcart was one of the most beautiful women in London, though “woman” might be too serious a word to apply to this slender girl who had barely emerged from her school-days.

In some grey eyes of a peculiar softness a furtive apprehension always seems to wait—a fear and an appeal at one and the same time. So it was with Edith Cathcart. Those eyes of hers were for ever on guard, and even as they attracted they held the overeager seeker of friendship at arm’s length. The nose was just a little retroussè; the sensitive lips played supporter to the apprehensive eyes. She wore her hair low over her forehead; it was dark almost to a point of blackness. She was dressed in a plain gown of sea-green satin, with scarcely any jewel or ornamentation.

He walked to meet her with quick steps and took both her hands in his; his hungry eyes searched her face eagerly.

“You look lovely to-night, Edith,” he said, in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

She released her hands gently with the ghost of a smile that subtly atoned for her action.

“Did you enjoy your Derby Day?” she asked.

“It was enormously interesting,” he said; “it is extraordinary that I have never been before.”

“You could not have chosen a worse day. Did you get caught in the storm? We have had a terrible one here.”

She spoke quickly, with a little note of query at the end of each sentence. She gave you the impression that she desired to stand well with her lover, that she was in some awe of him. She was like a child, anxious to acquit herself well of a lesson; and now and then she conveyed a sense of relief, as one who had surmounted yet another obstacle.

Gilbert was always conscious of the strain which marked their relationship. A dozen times a day he told himself that it was incredible that such a strain should exist. But he found a ready excuse for her diffidence and the furtive fear which came and went in her eyes like shadows over the sea. She was young, much younger than her years. This beautiful bud had not opened yet, and his engagement had been cursed by over-much formality.

He had met her conventionally at a ball. He had been introduced by her mother, again conventionally, he had danced with her and sat out with her, punted her on the river, motored her and her mother to Ascot. It was all very ordinary and commonplace. It lacked something. Gilbert never had any doubt as to that.

He took the blame upon himself for all deficiencies, though he was something of a romancist, despite the chilly formalism of the engagement. She had kept him in his place with the rest of the world, one arm’s length, with those beseeching eyes of hers. He was at arm’s length when he proposed, in a speech the fluency of which was eloquent of the absence of anything which touched emotionalism. And she had accepted in a murmured word, and turned a cold cheek for his kiss, and then had fluttered out of his arms like an imprisoned bird seeking its liberty, and had escaped from that conventional conservatory with its horrible palms and its spurious Tanagra statuettes.

Gilbert in love was something of a boy; an idealist, a dreamer. Other grown men have shared his weakness, there are unsuspected wells of romance in the most practical of men. So he was content with his dreams, weaving this and that story of sweet surrender in his inmost heart. He loved her, completely, absorbingly. To him she was a divine and a fragrant thing.

He had taken her hand again in his, and realised with pain, which was tinctured with amusement that made it bearable, that she was seeking to disengage herself, when Mrs. Cathcart came into the room.

She was a tall woman, still beautiful, though age had given her a certain angularity. The ravages of time had made it necessary for her to seek artificial aid for the strengthening of her attractions. Her mouth was thin and straight and uncompromising, her chin too bony to be beautiful. She smiled as she rustled across the room and offered her gloved hand to the young man.

“You’re early, Gilbert,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied awkwardly. Here was the opportunity which he sought, yet he experienced some reluctance in availing himself of the chance.

He had released the girl as the door opened, and she had instinctively taken a step backward, and stood with her hands behind her, regarding him gravely and intently.

“Really,” he said, “I wanted to see you.”

“To see me?” asked Mrs. Cathcart archly. “No, surely not me!”

Her smile comprehended the girl and the young man. For some reason which he could not appreciate at the moment Gilbert felt uncomfortable.

“Yes, it was to see you,” he said, “but it isn’t remarkable at this particular period of time.”

He smiled again.

She held up a warning finger.

“You must not bother about any of the arrangements. I want you to leave that entirely to me. You will find you have no cause to complain.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that,” he said hastily, “it was something more—more—”

He hesitated. He wanted to convey to her the gravity of the business he had in hand. And even as he approached the question of an interview, a dim realisation came to him of the difficulty of his position. How could he suggest to this woman, who had been all kindness and all sweetness to him, that he suspected her of motives which did credit neither to her head nor her heart? How could he broach the subject of his poverty to one who had not once but a hundred times confided to him that his expectations and the question of his future wealth were the only drawbacks to what she had described as an ideal love marriage?

“I almost wish you were poor, Gilbert,” she had said. “I think riches are an awful handicap to young people circumstanced as you and Edith will be.”

She had conveyed this suspicion of his wealth more than once. And yet, at a chance word from Leslie, he had doubted the purity of her motives! He remembered with a growing irritation that it had been Mrs. Cathcart who had made the marriage possible; the vulgar-minded might even have gone further, and suggested that she had thrown Edith at his head. There was plenty of groundwork for Leslie’s suspicion, he thought, as he looked at the tall, stylish woman before him. Only he felt ashamed that he had listened to the insidious suggestion.

“Could you give me a quarter of an hour——” He stopped. He was going to say “before dinner,” but thought that possibly an interview after the meal would be less liable to interruption.

“—after dinner?”

“With pleasure,” she smiled. “What are you going to do? Confess some of the irregularities of your youth?”

He shook his head with a little grimace.

“You may be sure I shall never tell you those,” he said.

“Then I will see you after dinner,” she assented. “There are a lot of people coming to-night, and I am simply up to my eyes in work. You bridegrooms,” she patted his shoulder with her fan reproachfully, “have no idea what chaos you bring into the domestic life of your unfortunate relatives of the future.”

Edith stood aloof, in the attitude she had adopted when he had released her, watchful, curious, in the scene, but not of it. It was an effect which the presence of Mrs. Cathcart invariably produced upon her daughter. It was not an obliteration, not exactly an eclipse, as the puzzled Gilbert had often observed. It was as though the entrance of one character of a drama were followed by the immediate exit of her who had previously occupied the scene. He pictured Edith waiting at the wings for a cue which would bring her into active existence again, and that cue was invariably the retirement of her mother.

“There are quite a number of nice people coming to-night, Gilbert,” said Mrs. Cathcart, glancing at a slip of paper in her hand. “There are some you don’t know, and some I want you very much to meet. I am sure you will like dear Dr. Cassylis——”

A smothered exclamation caught her ear, and she looked up sharply. Gilbert’s face was set: it was void of all expression. The girl saw the mask and wondered.

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Cathcart.

“Nothing,” said Gilbert steadily, “you were talking about your guests.”

“I was saying that you must meet Dr. Barclay-Seymour—he is a most charming man. I don’t think you know him?”

Gilbert shook his head.

“Well, you ought to,” she said. “He’s a dear friend of mine, and why on earth he practises in Leeds instead of maintaining an establishment in Harley Street I haven’t the slightest idea. The ways of men are beyond finding out. Then there is.…”

She reeled off a list of names, some of which Gilbert knew.

“What is the time?” she asked suddenly. Gilbert looked at his watch.

“A quarter to eight? I must go,” she said. “I will see you immediately after dinner.”

She turned back as she reached the door irresolutely.

“I suppose you aren’t going to change that absurd plan of yours,” she asked hopefully.

Gilbert had recovered his equanimity.

“I do not know to which absurd plan you are referring,” he said.

“Spending your honeymoon in town,” she replied.

“I don’t think Gilbert should be bothered about that.”

It was the girl who spoke, her first intrusion into the conversation. Her mother glanced at her sharply.

“In this case, my dear,” she said freezingly, “it is a matter in which I am more concerned than yourself.”

Gilbert hastened to relieve the girl of the brunt of the storm. Mrs. Cathcart was not slow to anger, and although Gilbert himself had never felt the lash of her bitter tongue, he had a shrewd suspicion that his future wife had been a victim more than once.

“It is absolutely necessary that I should be in town on the days I referred to,” he said. “I have asked you——”

“To postpone the wedding?” said Mrs. Cathcart. “My dear boy, I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t a reasonable request, now was it?”

She smiled at him as sweetly as her inward annoyance allowed her.

“I suppose it wasn’t,” he said dubiously.

He said no more, but waited until the door had closed behind her, then he turned quickly to the girl.

“Edith,” he said, speaking rapidly, “I want you to do something for me.”

“You want me to do something?” she asked in surprise.

“Yes, dearest. I must go away now. I want you to find some excuse to make to your mother. I’ve remembered a most important matter which I have not seen to——”

He spoke hesitatingly, for he was no ready liar.

“Going away!”

It was surprise rather than disappointment, he noticed, and was pardonably irritated.

“You can’t go now,” she said, and that look of fear came into her eyes. “Mother would be so angry. The people are arriving.”

From where he stood he had seen three motor broughams draw up almost simultaneously in front of the house.

“I must go,” he said desperately. “Can’t you get me out in any way? I don’t want to meet these people, I’ve very good reasons.”

She hesitated a moment.

“Where are your hat and coat?” she asked.

“In the hall—you will just have time,” he said.

She was in the hall and back again with his coat, led him to the farther end of the drawing-room, through a door which communicated with the small library beyond. There was a way here to the garage and to the mews at the back of the house.

She watched the tall, striding figure with a troubled gaze, then as he disappeared from view she fastened the library door and came back to the drawing-room in time to meet her mother.

“Where is Gilbert?” asked Mrs. Cathcart.

“Gone,” said the girl.

“Gone!”

Edith nodded slowly.

“He remembered something very important and had to go back to his house.”

“But of course he is returning?”

“I don’t think so, mother,” she said quietly. “I fancy that the ‘something’ is immensely pressing.”

“But this is nonsense!” Mrs. Cathcart stamped her foot. “Here are all the people whom I have specially invited to meet him. It’s disgraceful!”

“But, mother——”

“Don’t ‘but mother’ me, for God’s sake!” said Mrs. Cathcart.

They were alone, the guests were assembling in the larger drawing-room, and there was no need for the elder woman to disguise her feelings.

“You sent him away, I suppose?” she said. “I don’t blame him. How can you expect to keep a man at your side if you treat him as though he were a grocer calling for orders?”

The girl listened wearily, and did not raise her eyes from the carpet.

“I do my best,” she said in a low voice.

“Your worst must be pretty bad if that is your best. After I’ve strained my every effort to bring to you one of the richest young men in London, you might at least pretend that his presence is welcome; but if he were the devil himself you couldn’t show greater reluctance at meeting him or greater relief at his departure.”

“Mother!” said the girl, and her eyes were filled with tears.

“Don’t ‘mother’ me, please!” said Mrs. Cathcart deliberately. “I am sick to death of your faddiness and your prejudices. What on earth do you want? What am I to get you?”

She threw out her arms in exasperated despair.

“I don’t want to marry at all,” said the girl in a low voice. “My father would never have forced me to marry.”

It was a daring thing to say, an exhibition of greater boldness than she had ever shown before in her encounters with her mother. But lately there had come to her a new courage. That despair which had made her dumb glowed now to rage, the fires of rebellion smouldered in her heart; and, albeit the demonstrations of her growing resentment were few and far between, her courage grew upon her venturing.

“Your father!” breathed Mrs. Cathcart, white with rage, “am I to have your father thrown at my head? Your father was a fool! A fool!” She almost hissed the word. “He ruined me as he ruined you because he hadn’t sufficient sense to keep the money he had inherited. I thought he was a clever man. I looked up to him for twenty years as the embodiment of all that was wise and kind and genial, and all those twenty years he was frittering away his competence on every hair-brained scheme which the needy adventurers of finance brought to him. He would not have forced you! I swear he wouldn’t!” She laughed bitterly. “He would have married you to the chauffeur if your heart was that way inclined. He was all amiability and incompetence, all good-nature and inefficiency. I hate your father!”

Her blue eyes were opened to their widest extent and the cold glare of hate was indeed apparent to the shrinking girl. “I hate him every time I have to entertain a shady stockbroker for the advantage I may receive from his knowledge of the market; I hate him for every economy I have to practise; I hate him every time I see my meagre dividends come in and as I watch them swallowed up by the results of his folly. Don’t make me hate you,” she said, pointing a warning finger at the girl.

Edith had cowered before the torrent of words, but this slander of her dead father roused something within her, put aside all fear of consequence, even though that consequence might be a further demonstration of that anger which she so dreaded.

Now she stood erect, facing the woman she called mother, her face pale, but her chin tilted a little defiantly.

“You may say what you like about me, mother,” she said quietly, “but I will not have you defame my father. I have done all you requested: I am going to marry a man who, though I know he is a kindly and charming man, is no more to me than the first individual I might meet in the street to-night. I am making this sacrifice for your sake: do not ask me to forego my faith in the man who is the one lovable memory in my life.”

Her voice broke a little, her eyes were bright with tears.

Whatever Mrs. Cathcart might have said, and there were many things she could have said, was checked by the entry of a servant.

For a moment or two they stood facing one another, mother and daughter, in silence. Then without another word Mrs. Cathcart turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

The girl waited for a moment, then went back to the library through which Gilbert had passed. She closed the door behind her and turned on one of the lights, for it was growing dark. She was shaking from head to foot with the play of these pent emotions of hers. She could have wept, but with anger and shame. For the first time in her life her mother had shown her heart. The concentrated bitterness of years had poured forth, unchecked by pity or policy. She had revealed the hate which for all these years had been gnawing at her soul; revealed in a flash the relationship between her father and her mother which the girl had never suspected.

That they had not been on the most affectionate terms Edith knew, but her short association with the world in which they moved had reconciled her mind to the coolness which characterised the attitudes of husband and wife. She had seen a score of such houses where man and wife were on little more than friendly terms, and had accepted such conditions as normal. It aroused in her a wild irritation that such relationships should exist: child as she was, she had felt that something was missing. But it had also reconciled her to her marriage with Gilbert Standerton. Her life with him would be no worse, and probably might be a little better, than the married lives of those people with whom she was brought into daily contact.

But in her mother’s vehemence she caught a glimpse of the missing quality of marriage. She knew now why her gentle father had changed suddenly from a genial, kindly man, with his quick laugh and his too willing ear for the plausible, into a silent shadow of a man, the sad, broken figure she so vividly retained in her memory.

Here was a quick turn in the road of life for her an unexpected vista flashing into view suddenly before her eyes. It calmed her, steadied her. In those few minutes of reflection, standing there in the commonplace, gloomy little library, watching through the latticed panes the dismal mews which offered itself for inspection through a parallelogram of bricked courtyard, she experienced one of those great and subtle changes which come to humanity.

There was a new outlook, a new standard by which to measure her fellows, a new philosophy evolved in the space of a second. It was a tremendous upheaval of settled conviction which this tiny apartment witnessed.

She was surprised herself at the calmness with which she returned to the drawing-room and joined the party now beginning to assemble. It came as a shock to discover that she was examining her mother with the calm, impartial scrutiny of one who was not in any way associated with her. Mrs. Cathcart observed the girl’s self-possession and felt a twinge of uneasiness.

She addressed her unexpectedly, hoping to surprise her to embarrassment, and was a little staggered by the readiness with which the girl met her gaze and the coolness with which she disagreed to some proposition which the elder woman had made.

It was a new experience to the masterful Mrs. Cathcart. The girl might be sulking, but this was a new variety of sulks, foreign to Mrs. Cathcart’s experience.

She might be angry, yet there was no sign of anger; hurt—she should have been in tears. Mrs. Cathcart’s experienced eye could detect no sign of weeping. She was puzzled, a little alarmed. She had gone too far, she thought, and must conciliate, rather than carry on the feud until the other sued for forgiveness.

It irritated her to find herself in this position, but she was a tactician first and foremost, and it would be bad tactics on her part to pursue a disadvantage. Rather she sought the status quo ante bellum, and was annoyed to discover that it had gone for ever.

She hoped the talk that evening would confuse the girl to the point of seeking her protection; but to her astonishment Edith spoke of her marriage as she had never spoken of it before, without embarrassment, without hesitation, coolly, reasonably, intelligently.

The end of the evening found Edith commanding her field and her mother in the position of a suitor.

Mrs. Cathcart waited till the last guest had gone, then she came into the smaller drawing-room to find Edith standing in the fireplace, looking thoughtfully at a paper which lay upon the mantleshelf.

“What is it interests you so much, dear?”

The girl looked round, picked up the paper and folded it slowly.

“Nothing particularly,” she said. “Your Dr. Cassylis is an amusing man.”

“He is a very clever man,” said her mother tartly.

She had infinite faith in doctors, and offered them the tribute which is usually reserved for the supernatural.

“Is he?” said the girl coolly. “I suppose he is. Why does he live in Leeds?”

“Really, Edith, you are coming out of your shell,” said her mother with a forced smile of admiration. “I have never known you take so much interest in the people of the world before.”

“I am going to take a great deal of interest in people,” said the girl steadily. “I have been missing so much all my life.”

“I think you are being a little horrid,” said her mother, repressing her anger with an effort; “you’re certainly being very unkind. I suppose all this nonsense has arisen out of my mistaken confidence.”

The girl made no reply.

“I think I’ll go to bed, mother,” she said.

“And whilst you’re engaged in settling your estimate of people,” said Mrs. Cathcart with ominous calm, “perhaps you will interpret your fiancé’s behaviour to me. Dr. Cassylis particularly wanted to meet him.”

“I am not going to interpret anything,” said the girl.

“Don’t employ that tone with me,” replied her mother sharply.

The girl stopped, she was half-way to the door. She hardly turned, but spoke to her mother over her shoulder.

“Mother,” she said, quietly but decidedly, “I want you to understand this: if there is any more bother, or if I am again made the victim of your crossness, I shall write to Gilbert and break off my engagement.”

“Are you mad?” gasped the woman.

Edith shook her head.

“No, I am tired,” she said, “tired of many things.”

There was much that Mrs. Cathcart could have said, but with a belated wisdom she held her tongue till the door had closed behind her daughter. Then, late as the hour was, she sent for the cook and settled herself grimly for a pleasing half hour, for the vol-au-vent had been atrocious.

CHAPTER IV.
THE “MELODY IN F”

Gilbert Standerton was dressing slowly before his glass when Leslie was announced. That individual was radiant and beautiful to behold as became the best man at the wedding of an old friend.

Leslie Frankfort was one of those fortunate individuals who combine congenial work with the enjoyment of a private income. He was the junior partner of a firm of big stockbrokers in the City, a firm which dealt only with the gilt-edged markets of finance. He enjoyed in common with Gilbert a taste for classical music, and this was the bond which had first drawn the two men together.

He came into the room, deposited his silk hat carefully upon a chair, and sat on the edge of the bed, offering critical suggestions to the prospective bridegroom.

“By the way,” he said suddenly, “I saw that old man of yours yesterday.”

Gilbert looked round.

“You mean Springs, the musician?”

The other nodded.

“He was playing for the amusement of a theatre queue—a fine old chap.”

“Very,” said Gilbert absently.

He paused in his dressing, took up a letter from the table, and handed it to the other.

“Am I to read it?” asked Leslie.

Gilbert nodded.

“There’s nothing to read, as a matter of fact,” he said; “it’s my uncle’s wedding present.”

The young man opened the envelope and extracted the pink slip. He looked at the amount and whistled.

“One hundred pounds,” he said. “Good Lord! that won’t pay the up-keep of your car for a quarter. I suppose you told Mrs. Cathcart?”

Gilbert shook his head.

“No,” he said shortly, “I intended telling her but I haven’t. I am perfectly satisfied in my own mind, Leslie, that we are doing her an injustice. She has been so emphatic about money. And after all, I’m not a pauper,” he said with a smile.

“You’re worse than a pauper,” said Leslie earnestly; “a man with six hundred a year is the worst kind of pauper I know.”

“Why?”

“You’ll never bring your tastes below a couple of thousand, you’ll never raise your income above six hundred—plus your Foreign Office job, that’s only another six hundred.”

“Work,” said the other.

“Work!” said the other scornfully, “you don’t earn money by work. You earn money by scheming, by getting the better of the other fellow. You’re too soft-hearted to make money, my son.”

“You seem to make money,” said Gilbert with a little smile.

Leslie shook his head vigorously.

“I’ve never made a penny in my life,” he confessed with some enjoyment. “No, I have got some very stout, unimaginative senior partners who do all the money-making. I merely take dividends at various periods of the year. But then I was in luck. What is your money, by the way?”

Gilbert was in the act of tying his cravat. He looked up with a little frown.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean, is it in securities—does it continue after your death?”

The little frown still knit the brows of the other.

“No,” he said shortly, “after my death there is scarcely enough to bring in a hundred and fifty a year. I am only enjoying a life interest on this particular property.”

Leslie whistled.

“Well, I hope, old son, that you’re well insured.”

The other man made no attempt to interrupt as Leslie, arguing with great fluency and skill on the duties and responsibilities of heads of families, delivered himself of his views on insurance and upon the uninsured.

“Some Johnnies are so improvident,” he said. “I knew a man——”

He stopped suddenly. He had caught a reflection of Gilbert’s face in the glass. It was haggard and drawn, it seemed the face of a man in mortal agony. Leslie sprang up.

“What on earth is the matter, my dear chap?” he cried. He came to the other’s side and laid his hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, it’s nothing—nothing, Leslie,” said Gilbert.

He passed his hand before his eyes as though to wipe away some ugly vision.

“I’m afraid I’ve been rather a careless devil. You see, I depended too much upon uncle’s money. I ought to be insured.”

“That isn’t worrying you surely?” asked the other in astonishment.

“It worries me a bit,” said Gilbert moodily. “One never knows, you know——”

He stood looking thoughtfully at the other, his hands thrust into his pockets.

“I wish to heaven this wedding had been postponed!”

Leslie laughed.

“It’s about time you were married,” he said. “What a jumpy ass you are.”

He looked at his watch.

“You’d better hurry up, or you’ll be losing this bride of yours. After all, this isn’t a day for gloom, it’s the day of days, my friend.”

He saw the soft look that came into Gilbert’s eyes, and felt satisfied with his work.

“Yes, there is that,” said Gilbert Standerton softly. “I forgot all my blessings. God bless her!” he said under his breath.

As they were leaving the house, Gilbert asked—

“I suppose you have a list of the guests who are to be present?”

“Yes,” said the other, “Mrs. Cathcart was most duteous.”

“Will Dr. Barclay-Seymour be there?” asked the other carelessly.