CHAPTER IV.
EXPLAINS WHAT VERA LEARNED
Just, however, as Vera was starting to her feet to read the telegram for which she had dared so much, the door of the study was opened with great swiftness but stealth.
The handle, it appeared, had been turned quite noiselessly, but, instantly on the alert, the girl rose and pushed the envelope into the bodice of her dress, and turned to face the intruder who proved to be no other than a footman named Judson to whom she had only that morning given notice because he was under suspicion of theft, although nothing could be proved against him.
For a moment—but only for a moment—her heart seemed to stand quite still in horror. All that this man had disguised in his years of service with Russell Langford—his cunning, his cupidity, his unscrupulousness—now, under the stress of this success of his, stood out with painful clearness and distinctness. Inevitably their eyes met—and they understood. Then habit asserted itself, and the servant looked down, feigning a respect he would never feel for her again.
“I thought I heard you call, miss,” said the man, recognising the necessity of explaining his presence although he had listened to all the proceedings from the far side of the door. “Has the telegraph-boy fainted? He looked to me when he came to the door as though he had been running much too fast,” and he bent over the lad’s prostrate form and affected to feel his pulse.
“Yes, that is it; he fainted quite suddenly,” returned Vera, clutching wildly at this feeble excuse. “Do you mind running up to my sitting-room and fetching my smelling salts? Don’t trouble about a doctor or other servants. I don’t think his attack really serious. These post-office people pay their servants so badly. Perhaps he has had to run about all day on a little bread and milk.”
“No doubt,” assented Judson who was busy laying the boy out quite flat. “Smelling salts, I always find, are the best cure for cases like this.” And he rose and stepped nimbly out of the room; but never once did he dare to look Vera in the face for fear she should take alarm too soon.
This time, however, the girl took care that she was not observed. With a quick movement she turned and pretended to follow him. But, as she saw him disappear up the staircase, she hastened back to the study, thrust the now empty chloroform-bottle into a drawer, and then, with fingers trembling with excitement she attacked the envelope which contained the telegram.
As it happened, it was sealed just as carelessly as are most of these important messages, and, almost in an instant, the flap parted in her fingers and permitted her to withdraw the pink form on which she saw written the very message she had dreaded: from the actress Flora Kaufmann:—
“TO JULES PRENDERGAST, BELSIZE THEATRE, ST. MARTIN’S LANE, W.C.
“Supper Scott’s postponed till to-morrow night. Blake will come alright. Give him a hint about your prospective marriage—Langford girl. Think he will stand 1,000. Much love. FLORA.”
As these horrible and insulting words formed themselves before her eyes, Vera stood torn by the most insane passion. Rage, jealousy, hatred, swept over her in one wild desolating gust so that one second murder flamed to her hands, then came a terrible sense of loneliness, helplessness and nausea, followed the next instant by deadly deliberation and calm.
“Oh! She shall not. She shall not. She shall not,” she caught herself muttering as she pressed the telegram back into the envelope which she rapidly sealed and replaced in the boy’s sachet. “Never, never shall she take Jules Prendergast from me. I would sooner kill him,” and she drew herself up to her full height, pressing the palms of her hands together as, in imagination, she raced over the events of the past few hours, and sought where she could foil the actress who was now actually carrying the war amongst her own friends, to the very man she had resolved to bleed on Prendergast’s behalf—Ventris Blake.
“I will not wait. The first thing to-morrow I will go and see him,” she decided almost in a flash. “I will stop this supper party even if I have to go down on my knees to him. Never will I let this creature triumph.”
Yet, inwardly, she knew that the price she would have to pay for her victory over the actress would be dearer than an open act of abject humility, degrading in itself, no doubt, but, what was best, but a temporary expedient and quickly forgotten. Blake, she was aware, had no feeling for her except that of a master for a possibly useful servant. It was the pure, cold beauty of Winifred Pontifex that had led him captive; and only inasmuch as she assisted his schemes to win this girl for himself, could she hope to make the large sum of money which she required to finance Prendergast and the Belsize Theatre.
Just then, however, a low moan from the telegraph boy and a quick step on the stairs, warned her of the dangers of her present situation, and with a long deep sigh she thrust all these painful bewildering thoughts out of her mind, and threw open the door to meet Judson. Once again she was a cold, calm, collected woman. Without a word, she took the smelling salts from the man’s hand, and throwing herself on her knees beside the lad, she laboured for some minutes to restore him to consciousness.
Finally he sat up, his eyes wild and defiant. “I cannot let you have the telegram,” he exclaimed incoherently throwing his arms about as though he would protect himself from some unseen assailant.
“What telegram?” she asked innocently but soothingly. “Mr. Prendergast’s? Of course you cannot. See! Here it is in your pouch! It has never left your possession!
“Come,” she went on slowly but sweetly. “You have over-excited yourself and fainted. Look! You gave me such a start you made me smash my neuralgia mixture! There, don’t dream any more nonsense. Just look after him, Judson, will you? Put him in a hansom and drive him back to the post-office. Explain to the chiefs there his mind must be a little touched and beg them to soothe him, not to blame him.”
And with a gentle pat on the boy’s cheeks she rose and swept out of the room, leaving even the magnificent Judson for a time dumb with astonishment and admiration for her audacity.
“Well,” he muttered at length as he raised the boy in his powerful arms. “I have seen some clever ones in my time, but, hang it, she can beat the lot of them! Lucky for me though I saw all that she did to this poor little chap! It was a prison job that was, and at the right moment I will tell her so. It will be odd to me then if I ever have to do another stroke of work in my ‘natural.’ But then I never did like work!” And as he passed into the street and beckoned a hansom he caught himself chuckling like a man who had done a good, honest night’s work, and was to be congratulated on the result.
Meanwhile, however, Vera had gone to her room, the door of which she carefully locked and bolted after curtly dismissing her maid. For once she did not attempt to disrobe, but, drawing a chair up to the fire she sat crouched over the grate, turning over in her mind the day’s bitter disillusions and trials, and deciding she must go through with the course she had decided on in such dread and haste.
Finally, worn out, she stretched herself on the bed, and snatched a few hours’ troubled sleep—only to wake again when the hour of eight struck, and to perform a hurried toilet, after which she set out boldly for Park Lane, where she knew she would find Ventris Blake alone.
None the less, in spite of her naturally strong nerve the contents and bills of the morning papers gave her an ugly shock. Whereas one would discreetly announce “Tragedy at Scarborough,” another would throw all reserve to the winds, and in letters several inches deep would narrate: “A Millionaire’s Wife Murdered. Gay Seaside Resort in Panic. Park Lane in Mourning. A Railway Hue and Cry.”
It was easy enough, of course, for her to tell herself that this was no affair of hers. Somehow her conscience was not quite dead, and that morning it seemed to stir uneasily; and to warn her that the money she was after was in one sense blood money, and to ask who was she to sacrifice a good strong love like Arthur Hudson’s to Winifred Pontifex so that she might win the man of her choice, and defeat a creature of the stamp of Flora Kaufmann.
“It will do you no good,” the voice seemed to whisper to her, and the passing cabs and carts appeared to take up the refrain, and every jolt of the wheels ground out the words “no good! no good! no good!” until, with a great gulp of relief, she hastened up the steps of the millionaire’s residence and gave a long sonorous peal on the bell.
Every blind in the windows of Ventris Blake’s house was tightly drawn. In some miraculous fashion an air of almost sepulchral gloom had been imparted to its exterior, and this was rather heightened than lessened by the fact that two or three police constables were apparently hanging about, somehow lending a suggestion of a pictured scene of a crime.
Early as it was, Ventris Blake consented to see her and received her in his study, the shutters of which were bolted, hiding the flood of electric light that poured over the interior, and also the fact that he was busily engaged with his Hebrew secretary, Israel Sawdry, transacting his ordinary business.
Thus, seated face to face alone with the man on whose word so much of her happiness depended, even Vera’s courage failed, and she found herself taking refuge in the most obvious commonplaces. There was indeed something almost snakelike in the way he fixed his eyes on hers, waiting for her to begin a story that, rich man that he was, he must have known by heart. Eventually, she plucked up her courage, and began slowly and timidly.
“Do you remember your goodness to me, Mr. Blake, when you enabled me to make over £3,000 on the Stock Exchange? Well,” now more hurried, “I am in instant need of money again. I—I can’t even wait to make it. I must have £5,000,” and then she stopped and bit her lips. After all, what power was it in this sphinx-like creature who said nothing but only looked, and yet made her talk like an anxious, over-driven school girl?
“I remember perfectly,” he said, but his tones were cold and even. It was impossible to tell what he felt.
Again she reddened as she realised Ventris Blake was bent on compelling her to ask him bolt outright for what she sought.
“I thought,” she went on lamely, “that you might be disposed to advance that sum to me!”
“On what security?” he queried softly, knowing there was none.
“On—on my request,” struck in Vera plucking up courage. “I want to finance Mr. Prendergast further. I have not the means.”
“And do you propose to make me any return for my assistance?” proceeded Blake.
“Yes—anything I can,” said Vera eagerly.
“Well let us see where we stand—whether our minds run in unison. There is your cousin, for instance, Winifred Pontifex,” he suggested. “Don’t you agree with me it is absurd for her to think of marrying Arthur Hudson?”
“Yes,” replied Vera lamely, feeling she was now caught in a trap, and would be taken wherever the millionaire wished.
“That being so you will, of course, now do all you can to break the match off.”
“Of course!” But the tone was weak and Blake’s eyes flashed.
“There must be no hesitation, no half lights about this,” he snapped. “Arthur Hudson must be broken. Your cousin Winifred must be mine. On those conditions I am willing to spend any amount of money—but on those conditions alone.”
Vera bowed, not trusting herself to speak, and he went on: “I am, as a matter of fact, glad that you came. I have given a good deal of thought to this same subject this morning, and I have come to the conclusion that there is only one way in which you and I can bring this most desirable result about. First of all you must quarrel with your cousin. You must make your home at Emperor’s Gate impossible to her. You must drive her to earn a livelihood for herself!”
“That is impossible,” interjected Vera. “She will marry Hudson.”
“Not at all,” said the millionaire calmly. “Leave Arthur Hudson to me. I can ruin him. It’s Miss Pontifex I can’t manage, and I look to you when I have advanced you this £5,000, to make her feel it is essential for her to stay in Emperor’s Gate no longer, but that she must seek some situation where she can be free. That situation I have already secured for her. You do your part, and drive her to it, and, in the end, we shall win easily enough.”
“But what kind of situation is it?” stammered Vera feeling herself cornered hopelessly. “Really I don’t think I ought to do this.”
None the less she was over-persuaded, and departed £5,000 the richer it is true, but pledged to carry out Ventris Blake’s scheme.
CHAPTER V.
RECORDS THE APPEARANCE OF THREE GLASS EYES
To be told in a most solemn fashion that you are married when you know you are single is a fate more often the subject of jest than of experience in real life. To be brought face to face, however, with the actual marriage certificate which seems to prove in a most explicit fashion that you were married five years ago, is a disclosure so terrifying in its possibilities that a man may be well excused for breaking down completely under the strain.
Certainly for two or three hours after they left the barrister’s flat in Emperor’s Gate Arthur Hudson seemed a complete wreck. In vain Paul Renishaw told him that a mere piece of paper was not the best evidence to be found in the world—that an upright life would always stand higher than a couple of perjured witnesses—that it needed but a word to his friends to have rallied about him a mass of conflicting evidence that would assuredly put Ventris Blake and his scheme to complete extinction.
Somehow Arthur was filled with a great forboding that he was in no sense at an end of his knowledge of the millionaire’s villainies. “Mark my words,” said he, “Ventris Blake has not sprung this mine upon me simply to ruin me. For good or for ill he has conceived a wild and insane passion for Winifred Pontifex; and he will not rest until he succeeds in entangling her within the net he has so cleverly woven about me.”
“What if he does?” asked Paul, with that stout and loyal commonsense of his. “Winifred knows what a scoundrel he is, and she is no more likely to falter in her love for you than she is to yield to Vera Langford’s persuasion to give him just the mere colour of encouragement. No, I don’t think at this point you need trouble very much on that score. Just rouse yourself, and let us be practical, and consider the bearing of our present dangers. The real trouble is this—we don’t quite see how the attack will come upon us. Of course, it would be a fine thing for me if I could sit down right here and write one of our own sensational accounts of that terrible interview at Emperor’s Gate for The Moon. It would be talked about from one end of England to the other; and it would arouse and alarm all your friends. But I am not quite sure whether at this point it would be wise to do this.”
“It would certainly put Ventris Blake on the alert,” remarked Arthur slowly. “I don’t myself see why we should let out a fact before we are compelled.”
“On the whole,” pursued Paul, “I think it would be well if you and I work very slowly and very steadily in the dark. Directly we make any fuss we shall find all our movements and enquiries hampered. The police, for instance, would pounce upon the disclosures, and before we could stir a step they would be telegraphing and working all over the country anxious, in default of anybody better, to affix the guilt of that poor woman’s murder upon yourself. Well now, we don’t want any interference like that; we don’t want them to shadow every move we make, and to be as wise, if not wiser, than ourselves. No, on the whole it would be better to leave the police to look after Mr. Ventris Blake.”
For some minutes the two men sat in Hudson’s rooms in Kensington Gore and thought deeply. Then, after another quick and eager discussion, they arrived at certain very important decisions.
In the first place, they decided that it would be best for Paul to get special leave of absence from The Moon by telegraph, and to go down by one of the first trains to Peterborough where he could investigate the facts of Arthur’s supposed marriage for himself. Unfortunately, the names of the two witnesses on the certificate “Israel Sawdry” and “Rebecca Charlton” afforded absolutely no indication of their position or their residence. More than that, it was not likely that the Registrar would be of much serious assistance; but Paul took one of Arthur’s photographs to show this official, and promised that he would spare neither pains nor expense in his search for facts about the murdered woman who had, it will be remembered, given her address as Meissonier Studios, Peterborough.
In the second place, it was agreed that Arthur should do nothing at this point to direct public attention to matters. The part he was to assume was that of the passive accused—but he also arranged to go down very early to Queen Victoria Street, and, if possible, to discover the reason why Ventris Blake had taken that mysterious garret at the top of No. 375.
“There is some tremendous mystery attached to the taking of that room, I am certain,” declared Arthur, as he passed in review the extraordinarily painstaking search which the millionaire had conducted before he secured the exact kind of room he required. “For my own part, I do not believe it turns on the death of his wife, but rather, on some particular conspiracy he has engineered against me. Perhaps, if that is so, the caretaker may be able to throw some light on his manœuvres.”
“At all events, old chap,” put in Paul, “you can claim, as landlords’ agent, to inspect the premises whenever you think fit. If you take my advice, you will seize an opportunity of doing this when Mr. Blake and his assistant are absent. Then don’t have too nice a sense of honour about the accident that you are in a stranger’s room. Just institute a most careful search—and understand that if you don’t expose this man he will ruin you.”
Dawn was climbing up the wall as Paul uttered this farewell injunction, and realising that if they were to be prepared for the troubles of the morrow, they must have some rest, the two men turned into their rooms and were soon fast asleep.
Blessed by a good conscience, Arthur did not, like Vera Langford, toss restlessly to and fro, but soon dropped into a deep and peaceful slumber, which it needed all Paul’s efforts to break when Arthur’s man came for the third time and declared that the trap was ready to take them to King’s Cross to catch the early train for Peterborough.
No sooner, however, had Arthur seen Paul safely started on his journey North than he turned his horse’s head in the direction of Cheapside. The fresh clear morning air had revived his spirits, and nobody who saw him spring from his trap and hurry into his counting house, would have guessed how terrible a load of shame and trouble was pressing upon him. Indeed, he went through the routine work of his letters with his old promptness and precision. In due course too, the agreement with Ventris Blake for the tenancy of the Queen Victoria Street garret, came before him, but there it must be admitted he did hesitate for a little while, and asked himself anxiously whether he should sign it and settle it, or whether it would not be wiser even at this last moment to repudiate his bargain.
For fully ten minutes indeed, he toyed with the idea. Some strong impelling power of custom drove him almost irresistably forward to do as he had promised. At the same time another intuition within him clamoured for expression. “Stop,” it seemed to urge him. “Or, you will regret this contract. It is quite true that you do not know for what this mysterious room is intended, but do not the suggestive circumstances in which it was taken warn you that it is not meant for good?”
Finally he did a weak thing—he compromised. One moment he bent down and signed the agreement with a bold defiant flourish. Another moment—telling his secretary that he must make no more appointments for him that day—he seized his hat and went off to inspect the interior of No. 375 for himself.
The premises in question proved to be one of those large towering blocks of buildings which are situated a few yards distant from the Salvation Army Head Quarters, and opposite the Civil Service Stores. The first three floors were occupied by a dealer in gas stoves; the fourth and fifth by two firms of Commission Agents in the Nottingham Lace trade; and the sixth, the top, contained the odd shaped room that had exercised so potent a fascination upon Ventris Blake.
Now excited, Arthur toiled up the different flights of steps until at length he reached to the top where he found himself faced by four doors, all of which seemed tightly locked and only one suggested any sign of human habitation—and in the woodwork of that was inlet a small electric bell.
In answer to his summons, however, the caretaker appeared—a small, thick-set man of about fifty with shifty blue eyes and a mass of red whiskers and cheeks puffed out and reddened by lack of exercise and drink. His manner was surly if not actually defiant, and for some time, Arthur had difficulty in making any headway with him at all.
At first, like most of the uneducated class from which he sprang, this man affected complete ignorance. He did not know that one of the garrets had been taken. He had not heard the name of any Mr. Ventris Blake. The gentleman in front of him might be the agent, Mr. Arthur Hudson, who employed him. He didn’t say he was—and he didn’t say he wasn’t. He had never seen Mr. Hudson himself, and if he listened to every fairy story that was told him by every stranger that came there, his place wouldn’t hold him another five minutes.
Finally, Arthur lost patience, “Look here,” he said very sternly, “I don’t come here to waste words with men of your stamp. Either you do as I tell you, and shew me round these rooms pretty sharp, or I’ll clear you out of these rooms and your berth here before the day is finished. I tell you frankly, I don’t like the obstacles you are putting in my path. You have made me distinctly suspicious. Now, just make up your mind pretty sharp what you are going to do. Here is my card. You can see for yourself who I am. It is your own fault that you don’t recognise my face. I remember yours perfectly well, and I can assure you it will be a good time before I forget it, so just hurry up and decide.”
The man snarled for a few seconds longer, but, directly Arthur looked angry, it was clear that he was beaten. Taking down a bunch of keys from the wall he consented to shew Arthur over the room Ventris Blake had taken. Curiously enough, the millionaire had already gone in possession of it. His things had actually arrived and been arranged an hour previous, and hearing this Arthur resolved on a bold move. He took the keys from the hands of the caretaker and dispatched the man to his office to await his return. Thus, freed from all observation, he advanced to his promised examination of the garret in question—but as he threw open the door, even he was astounded at the extraordinary transformation Ventris Blake had wrought in the appearance of the room.
Contrary to his expectations, Ventris Blake had made no effort whatever to use the place as an office or a storehouse. As a matter of fact indeed, he seemed to have done his best to destroy entirely the original character of the room; and the result was that the first impression that Arthur got on crossing the threshold was of passing into another world, remote altogether from London—to a world of early Victorian time, into a curiously shaped old drawing-room, at the period when drawing-rooms were stiff and scented and full of quaint dimity hangings and furniture that was solid enough no doubt but never exhibited any pretence to comfort.
“What on earth has the man done this extraordinary thing for?” he cried aloud in his astonishment. Then quickly recovering himself, he stepped swiftly round the apartment till suddenly his eyes were caught and held by the most extraordinary object in the whole of the apartment. This was a huge shield of black velvet fixed on the wall above the fireplace, from which, by a cunning arrangement of the lights in the casement, there gleamed three huge half-human eyes of glass, so life-like indeed, that they seemed to dominate and radiate across the entire length of the room.
“Good heavens,” he muttered, half paralysed with horror at this fearful object. “Although I know they are made by the hand of man, I am half afraid to look at them, they are so startling, so lifelike.”
In spite of himself he fell back a step, covering his eyes with his hands. Even as he did so, however, he became conscious of another presence in the room besides his own. Looking round fearfully and hurriedly, he was astounded to see behind him the man he hated most in the world—Ventris Blake.
With a keen sense of chivalry, that was strangely out of place in dealing with so polished a trickster, Arthur however did not attempt to make capital out of this visit. Most other men would, by a skilful series of questions and manœuvres, have sought to elucidate the meaning and the object of that grim startling device on the huge black shield over the mantlepiece.
Arthur, on the contrary, affected that he had no interest in his surroundings, and contented himself by giving the millionaire a curt nod and the explanation that he had merely come to see that everything was in order for Blake’s tenancy to begin. Then, with another curt nod, he passed quite calmly out of the room, leaving, it must be confessed, Ventris Blake somewhat puzzled by his gentlemanly reticence.
No sooner, however, had he got back to his private room in Cheapside, than he rang the bell and directed that the caretaker of No. 375 should be brought before him. A moment later, the man entered, his temper in no sense improved by the time he had been detained in the outer office, without a word of explanation; and here Arthur made the greatest mistake in tactics that he ever made in his life.
Instead of trying to manage this man—of making him feel that he had done a certain amount of wrong which only good behaviour in the future could wipe out—that in order to win his way back, he must be loyal, courteous and exact in the future—he took the tone of a justly aggrieved master. Unhappily, the fellow had none of the feelings of a servant, and instantly he hated Arthur like poison, whereas tact might have turned him into a most valuable detective.
“I suppose,” Arthur began, “you know you were very rude to me when I called at your rooms this morning! Obviously, I can’t have this kind of thing in an important set of offices like those at No. 375. You must, therefore, move at once down to that new block of flats that we are building at Hammersmith. Go back at once, and be ready to start at four o’clock, when the cart will call for your things.” And thinking the matter was settled, he bent down and started to write—but the man stood his ground.
“Well now, Mr. Hudson,” he began in a tone that was meant to be nasty, very nasty indeed, “suppose I don’t choose to career off to a forsaken jerry-built hole like that beautiful property of yours at Hammersmith, how then?”
Arthur’s brow clouded. “You will be turned out.”
The man coughed, then advanced to the grate and spat viciously in the fire. “Oh! and I shall be turned out shall I.”
“You will be turned out,” repeated Arthur firmly.
“Then I will be turned out. Indeed, I would like to be turned out now I know what a kind of gentleman you are—who simply wants to get rid of a clean, honest caretaker, like the Missis and myself, so that you can get hold of my rooms and act the part of a spy and eavesdropper on a rich and openhanded gent like Mr. Ventris Blake. You think, of course, I didn’t see through your ikey little trick, but I did first time—and, I tell you to your face, you ain’t no class.”
Long before this tirade was finished, Arthur had sprung to his feet, his face crimson with passion. To be absolutely fair to him, he had absolutely no idea of keeping any watch on Ventris Blake’s movements, and his first impulse was to take this beer-sodden rascal by the scruff of the neck and kick him down the passage. Happily, he remembered the squalid row that would follow, and the disgrace of an appearance at the Mansion House, on a charge of common assault, particularly at this serious crisis in his affairs: and wisely, he refrained from soiling his hands.
“You blackguard,” he said, with a quick shrug of the shoulders, “tell me your name, and I will have your money sent to you.”
The man snorted, “My name’s as good as yours any day, Mr. Arthur Hudson,” he growled. “Better, as you may discover, one of these days, and much sooner than you imagine. Indeed, I shouldn’t be surprised, if you hadn’t to come to me, and beg me to forgive you your rude remarks this afternoon. But I shan’t—I shan’t,” and he banged his fist vigorously on the table.
Arthur took this threat as a mere piece of drunken bravado, and persisted in his demand. “Tell me your name,” he enquired again.
“George Charlton,” the fellow answered: and into his eyes there came a look of strange cunning and satisfaction.
Charlton! Somewhere in the dim recesses of Arthur’s memory, a faint recollection stirred, as though this name possessed some odd significance to him—but not until he put the next question did the hideous truth break upon him.
“Charlton,” he repeated slowly, trying in vain to remember the lost connection. “Let me see, I have heard your name before, in other circumstances, haven’t I! What is the name of the Charwoman—your wife?”
“Rebecca Charlton,” the man faltered, and enraged though he was with Arthur, even he dare not look in his face.
Rebecca Charlton! All at once the real importance of this name burst upon Arthur’s mind like a lightning flash; and he could have cursed his folly, in thus early, making an enemy of one whose hostility might prove so deadly to him. For Rebecca Charlton was no other than the witness of his alleged marriage! Her name appeared plainly on the copy of the certificate, which Ventris Blake had shewn to Russell Langford at the flat that fatal night at Emperor’s Gate, and which, no doubt, would be produced when the real circumstances of that murder at Scarborough came before the magistrate.
Realising the uselessness of appealing to a drink-stained creature like this, however, Arthur mastered his agitation, and nodding his head in the direction of the door, he told the man to go, and never appear on his premises again.
For a moment, the fellow hesitated. He opened his mouth, as though he would speak—and say something, even more surprising than he had done. Then, all at once, he checked himself; the old crafty look came back into his face; and, with a smile of derision, he stepped out and disappeared from sight.
For two or three minutes after he had left, Arthur paced up and down his room, and thought deeply. Dearly he would have liked to recall the whole of that conversation with George Charlton, but he saw at once that it was too late, and so, like a wise man, he did not waste time in useless regrets, but tried to discover the best way to repair his blunder. One duty certainly stood out clear, above all others. He must keep in touch with this man and this man’s wife; and finally, he, perhaps, took the best course that was available to any man in the same bewildering set of circumstances—he sat down and wrote as under, to a famous firm of private detectives, that chanced to have offices near his own:—
Dear Sirs,—(he began) please send an officer to shadow two caretakers named Charlton, at No. 375, Queen Victoria Street. They will leave their position early this afternoon; and I am particularly anxious to find out where they move to, who they see, what they do, and any particulars of their past lives you can put your hands on. Pray do not spare any expense in presenting a full and exhaustive report daily, of their proceedings, visitors and conversations, and treat each one of them as equally important to the issues I have in hand. With compliments,
Yours faithfully,
Arthur Hudson.
A moment later, this note was despatched to its destination, and Arthur found himself free to consider what was, perhaps, the most puzzling of all that morning’s adventures—the mystery of The Three Glass Eyes.
Why, he asked himself again and again, until his brain seemed to reel under the problem, did Ventris Blake ever erect such a weird looking object as that in a garret in the very heart of London? To all intents and purposes it had no meaning, no use, no value. Yet, there it was, pregnant with mystery and suggestion, so prominently placed, as though the whole scheme of the room had been designed to throw it into baleful, sinister relief.
Once, he was disposed to think, that the device formed a medium by which Ventris Blake could mesmerise any persons that looked upon it. The next second he recognised this theory as absurd, for the successful mesmerist uses his own powers, and does not trust to the medium of manufactured force. Another time, he got the idea that that terrible looking shield might serve to frighten nervous women—then, he had to ask himself, why should nervous women be frightened at all, when there are any number of ruffians ready for hire in London for this kind of loathsome service. Besides, why should the room be specially fitted up in that early Victorian fashion, if the furniture had not also some peculiar significance—if Ventris Blake had not intended even the chairs and the tables and the hangings, to play some part in this weird drama of his, the key to which seemed to disappear entirely the more eagerly it was sought.
Eventually, he had to confess himself absolutely beaten at that point, and to own that after all Charlton may have been right in his suggestion, that if he wanted to know what Ventris Blake was doing in that particular room, he would have to act the part of spy upon him, although that character was one for which he had no manner of qualifications.
“I will wait until Paul Renishaw returns from Peterborough,” poor Arthur decided at last, distracted beyond measure by his reflections. “Perhaps his enquiries to-day, may make all this fuss of mine absolutely needless. Perhaps, he may even find that this supposed marriage of mine with Ventris Blake’s wife, was some silly drunken freak of some ‘friends’ I have long since forgotten, and was never properly worked off upon me at the time it was intended it should be. After all, let me be quite fair, I have great faith in Paul, and I am certain that if anybody can ferret out the heart of this mystery, he will do so for me.”
And he let his mind dwell pleasantly on the idea of Paul’s cleverness and the circumstances that once one of the heads of Scotland Yard had complimented his friend’s cleverness in working up the details of a mysterious murder in Whitechapel, and had declared that Paul would be an ornament to any detective force. Reassured by these reflections, he turned to his work again with a light heart. Somehow, no day seems so dark when we think that the evening may bring relief.
Poor Arthur! Little did he know the forces of ill that were arrayed against him, or the many dark, weary, heart-breaking days he would have to pass through, ere the whole of the circumstances of that supposed marriage of his at Peterborough came to be known. Little did he realise that a man of millions, unscrupulous like Blake, was not accustomed to work clumsily in affairs where his worst passions were concerned, or to build up houses of crime to hold his enemies, at the first touch on which they would fall to pieces.
Poor Arthur! let him hug his fond delusions as long as the fate that was pressing him so hard would permit. Soon, all too soon, he was to discover how bitter life can be for the best and the wisest in certain dark crisis which no good power on earth seems able to avert.
Alas! he was this time to receive a fresh blow to his peace of mind, only an hour later, when a clerk came in hurriedly and announced “Miss Winifred Pontifex.”
This was the first time that Winifred had visited him since they had become engaged, and as he knew she disliked the idea of a call at the office very much, he realised that only some terrible and unexpected difficulty had driven her to adopt this course.
“I have left,” she now muttered to him brokenly, as she crept into his room like some creature sorely wounded—all the joyousness gone from her young fair face, and in place of the glad, smiling look that had hitherto appeared part of her bright sunny nature, she carried an expression of sadness so poignant, that it was hard to believe that she had ever lived and loved with such touching and complete devotion.
Pieced together, the facts she had to relate were sad enough to break down any spirit, even of a girl so fresh and trustful as Winifred Pontifex. At first, it was true, she refused to tell him the whole of them for fear that she should wound him beyond recall, at a time when he needed all his own enthusiasm and power to enable him to carry safely his own load that had of late grown so intolerable. But, as he took her hands in his, with that characteristic, quick, impetuous movement of his, and looked into her eyes with so much courage and pain, all her reserve seemed to ebb from her—and in place of a girl wounded almost to death, beneath a blow of shame and defeat, there appeared a sad-faced resourceful girl, in whose eyes shone the light of a brave, unselfish, upbearing love. Then—and only then—Winifred spoke to him from the bottom of her heart.
“It has been but a sad and a weary time at Emperor’s Gate since I bade you good-bye last night,” she explained, crossing her hands nun-like on her lap and looking far into the fire. “The shadow of a great impalpable terror seems to have brooded over us, so that at times, I have felt some terrible avalanche of woe would fall upon us. And yet,” she went on, still more slowly, “I had no idea it would come upon us like this.”
Once again she sighed, and then, catching the deepening look of anxiety, which Arthur tried in vain to repress, she roused herself with an effort, and went on with her story: “Of course, Vera came to me almost immediately after I went to my room last night, too distracted to see or to speak to anybody that might chance to call. Somehow, I felt that it was only right that I should confide to her all that had happened to us since that terrible man Ventris Blake had come to the flat and had shown Uncle that sham marriage certificate. In one way, of course, she was very sweet to me—she bent down and she played with the ornaments upon my neck and kept murmuring ‘Oh, you poor thing, you poor thing.’ None the less, I saw that her mind was not really fixed on what we were talking about, and so I quickly gave up trying to make her understand all that you and I felt about this vile and treacherous accusation, and I just contented myself by expressing to her how intolerable it was you, who had led such a good and upright life, should be suddenly plunged into a whirlpool of crime and treacheries.”
“Never mind me, darling,” said Arthur gently, “after all, a man isn’t much good if he can’t take a bit of trouble now and then and find his way through it the better and stronger for the experience. Just tell me about yourself, you know, dearest, it is really you that matter just now, and not me at all.”
A word of protest rose to Winifred’s lips, but then, seeing that she was straining Arthur’s anxiety by her reticence, she pressed the palms of her hands more tightly together and proceeded. “Well, it was just as I expected. Directly I gave Vera an opening, she slipped away, with a careless kiss, and a vague suggestion that if I really cared for you, all things of course, must come right in the end. Poor Vera! If I really cared. Sometimes Arthur, do you know, I often really wonder, whether Vera’s heart has ever been really touched yet! I know she has fallen under the domination of that man Jules Prendergast, but I don’t somehow think that infatuations for actors of that type are really love at all; and if they were, wouldn’t Vera understand now that it only needs trouble and danger to make true lovers cling together more closely.”
For a second the lovers’ eyes exchanged a look of eager, irresistible confidence, and once again, Winifred took up the thread of the tale.
“The real trouble occurred this morning, when I came down to breakfast. Vera had been out on some curious errand and had returned hot and excited—so hot and excited indeed, that we had not been in the room five minutes together, before the change in her thoughts about us, burst on me like a torrent. ‘So,’ said she, with an ever-rising inflection of scorn, ‘you still mean to stick to this married man that wooed you under the pretence he was single, do you?’ And as I rose to my feet, overcome with confusion, she went on with ever increasing bitterness to declare, that she was ashamed of my weakness and want of proper pride, and finished by calling on me, if I valued my good name and self-respect, to write and give you up there and then, and never to see your face again.
“Oh, dearest,” stammered Winifred, tears now falling unchecked over her clasped hands on her knees. “I really cannot bear to tell you all the wicked things she said about you—about me—about us both. Do let me hurry over this awful scene. Do believe that the things she said were so cruel, so false, so heartless that I felt I could not stay in the flat another day, and that whatever flight might mean, misery, poverty, almost disgrace, I must go, otherwise, I knew, I would have died for sheer shame that such words should be spoken unchallenged, about you.”
“I am sure, dearest, whatever you did was right,” said Arthur stoutly. “Nevertheless, there must be some strong reason for this very sudden change of front, don’t you think—this alteration from affection to harshness, this rapid movement from sympathy to intolerance.”
“No doubt,” agreed Winifred, with a grave shake of the head. “Indeed, when I came to think the conversation over, I got a strong impression that she must have been to see Ventris Blake, and he had put her up to this as a part of some diabolical scheme of his own, although of course, this is only intuition. I don’t possess an atom of proof.”
“Certainly, there is some treachery somewhere,” observed Arthur, who, unfortunately, could not realise to what depth a distracted but hot-headed girl will descend for the sake of a worthless lover. “I know of course, Vera did not like me, but I had no idea she was not fairly well disposed towards me, and certainly I did not think she would ever act in open hostility to me.”
“Happily,” said Winifred with one of her rare, fleeting smiles, “I chanced to find one friend in distress, and in a person, I have no reason to believe, held me in any particular esteem—no other than Melita, who, perhaps you may remember, is Vera’s maid. In my haste, I got her to put some of my things together, and not knowing where to take them to, I asked her if she knew of some cheap comfortable rooms. Then it was that she gave me a piece of splendid advice. ‘Why waste your money on landladies, miss,’ said she, with a knowing look. ‘Why not look out for a situation, where you would be treated as a lady, given a nice comfortable home, and have twenty or thirty pounds a year for yourself.’ I told her, of course, that I knew of no such opening, but oddly enough, she did, for she happens to go to that fashionable church, St. Sepulchre’s, in Piccadilly, and belongs to a Bible class conducted by the clergyman’s wife, who had happened to mention to her quite casually the other day, that she was in want of a nursery governess for her little girl aged seven.”
“A nursery governess,” repeated Arthur blankly; and even he could not hide a certain look of disappointment.
“Yes, a nursery governess,” repeated Winifred brightly. “If I have to work, I think I would sooner spend my days with a child than with anybody else. As a matter of fact, I jumped at the chance, and taking a hansom, I set off at once to the Vicarage, which adjoins the church, and in less than five minutes I was engaged for the position.”
“That was very quick work, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” admitted Winifred, “only, you see, the clergyman’s wife wasn’t in, I saw the man, the Reverend Duncan Kilroy, and he told me he was sure his wife would like any relation of so famous and trustworthy a lawyer as Russell Langford, and then engaged me to come in on the spot. True, I don’t quite like the clergyman—he is too oily somehow, perhaps a bit familiar, but Melita assured me that Mrs. Kilroy was ‘a perfect angel,’ and certainly the little girl, Monica, was as sweet a little child as I have ever seen.”
“Oh, but this is impossible,” protested Arthur hotly. “When you consider how well provided I am it is preposterous for you to turn yourself into a servant maid for any parson of that sort. Why not let us get married at once—” and then, all at once he stopped again. What right had he to ask any woman to share a name on which rested so terrible a load of suspicion as there did upon his?
Somehow, too, Winifred guessed he had already repented of his rash utterance, for rising from the chair upon which she had been seated, she looked gaily into his face, and tried to rally him. “Do you know, dear, you are not at all grateful for the good things that happen to you? Don’t you understand that this arrangement is much better for you and for me than the one we had agreed to accept at Emperor’s Gate? In St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage I shall at least be free to receive any letters I like from you, and to meet you in the Green Park at least once a week. Do not, therefore, repine. Let us try to look on the bright side of this separation, and trust that somehow things will soon right themselves again, and then in the face of the whole world, and without a single fear, we can become man and wife.”
In an instant, Arthur saw how selfish his objection was, and how ridiculous was the pride that had dictated his opposition. Indeed, pressed forward by his own frank and open nature, he strove eagerly to equal the heights reached by poor Winifred in the prompt sacrifice of herself.
“All right, dearest,” he cried quickly, bending down and kissing her fondly, “I am awfully sorry, I said such a selfish thing like that. Please forget I said it, and believe that I will never say another word like it again.”
A few minutes later he took her to a cab, and directed the driver to convey her to St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage. Then, seeing the clock nearly pointed to the hour of five, he called another hansom and made his way as rapidly as possible to King’s Cross, for he saw that the train by which he had arranged to meet Paul Renishaw on his return from Peterborough, was very shortly due. As it happened, the horse he had hired was a remarkably quick one, and he reached King’s Cross, ten minutes at least, before the time advertised for Paul’s train to arrive.
CHAPTER VI.
CONCERNS THE HOLE IN THE WALL
Not until the two friends were rumbling along in a first-class carriage on the underground railway, bound for South Kensington station, did Paul Renishaw say a word about his experiences at Peterboro’ in search of the truth about the certificate of that sham marriage, which was destined to prove that five years ago, Arthur Hudson had been something worse than a bigamist. Then his accents were so low, so grave, so full of sympathetic affection, that poor Arthur realised instinctively, that little good had resulted from the day’s efforts. And so indeed, it proved.
“I turned up at the Registry Office all right,” said Paul, pretending to busy himself with the shape and colour of the cigarette he was smoking, the more readily to hide his mortification. “But I confess I was very quickly nonplussed. You see, the Registrar, who it was alleged to have performed the ceremony, died about a year after. The marriage is entered in the proper books safe enough, and no doubt, some ceremony of the kind indicated, did actually take place. Unfortunately, the only person I could strike, who pretended at all to have any knowledge of the actual marriage, was an old woman who used to clean the office of the Registrar of Marriages, and who declares that she was present at the time your so-called wedding was solemnized. Naturally, I did not want to give her any clue as to what I was after, and so I merely contented myself by asking her to describe the kind of man the so-called ‘Arthur Hudson’ was. Confound it, the crazy old soul gave me a magnificent description of your personal appearance five years ago. Why, she even described that old-pepper-and-salt suit you were so fond of wearing about that period—and, when I produced the actual photograph, she took a solemn oath to me that you were the man who married Aimée Lucille Fausta Burgoyne on the date given.”
“But surely,” gasped Arthur, “that was enough to shake your faith in me!”
“No! it was not enough, nothing could do that, old chap,” responded Paul, very gently, although the lines on his features betrayed the deep anxiety he had passed through. “As a matter of fact, I had a small satisfaction of my own, at the Registry Office, before I saw this old beldame. You must know that during the discussion, the present Registrar produced the actual certificate of your marriage for my inspection, and I had a good look at the signature that purported to be written by yourself. Now, of course, old man, I know your writing quite as well as I know my own, and although this particular signature was amazingly like the one you are accustomed to use, I know enough of your characteristics to know that the thing was a clever but not a convincing forgery.”
“Thank heaven for that,” muttered Arthur fervently. “In truth, I had just begun to wonder, if, after all, I am not the villain these people have made out—whether after all, I had not fallen into some extraordinary trance five years ago, like those people you read of in the newspaper, and had completely lost all knowledge of my own identity for a few weeks during which, of course, I might have met this poor, ill-fated Aimée Burgoyne, and married her quite unknown to myself and my own companions; and then after a spell of married happiness, suddenly recovered my sanity and returned to my own self and my old way of life,” and checking the depression that was stealing over him, he broke into a low and mirthless laugh.
“Not a bit of it,” responded Paul cheerily. “The whole circumstances of the marriage are too shady, too suggestive to admit of any remote contingency like that. I soon found out when I came to enquire for Meissonier Studios, which I found to be a kind of greenhouse fixed at the end of an old garden, and formerly used by travelling photographers, what a base use had been made of a high sounding address, so as to gull the authorities! Indeed, the landlady of the place told me, that within the last six years, no fewer than thirty different people had tried to make a living in that shanty, and had failed, but as she kept no books, and only charged half-a-crown a week rent, ‘payment in advance, and leave at the end of seven days if you are not satisfied,’ I quickly saw that it was useless for me to attempt to pursue any enquiries in that direction.”
“But the witnesses,” queried Arthur, anxiously, “how about those?” And he suddenly recollected the facts of his encounter with the drunken caretaker, Charlton.
“Oh,” said Paul lightly, “I could make nothing out of those. I consulted a lot of old local directories—I stood a lot of free drinks to a lot of intelligent loafers—and, finally, I went to the police station, where I happened to meet a friend in the Chief Constable; and he worked like a nigger to help me. Nothing was known about ‘Israel Sawdry’ or ‘Rebecca Charlton’—not a word, so I concluded that they, like the bride and bridegroom, were all imported for the occasion, for the particular purpose of the fraud.”
“Well, luckily, old chap, I do know something about one of them.” And in a few quick and concise sentences, Arthur told Paul not only how, in this beer-sodden care-taker, George Charlton, he had discovered the husband of the very woman they were after, Rebecca Charlton, and had put detectives on the track of them both, but also how he had gone himself to that extraordinary garret Ventris Blake had taken at 375 Queen Victoria Street, and what he had seen there, including the strange device of The Three Glass Eyes.
Paul listened very quietly while all these facts were recounted to him, his brow growing every moment more and more cloudy. For fully ten minutes he sat back in the carriage, as they clattered through station after station on the Inner Circle, and he spoke not a word.
Indeed, it was only when they sat in Arthur’s own sitting-room in Kensington Gore, that he made any attempt to gauge the value of Arthur’s new and suggestive experiences. Then he tossed the end of his cigarette viciously into the fire, and throwing himself into an armchair, told Arthur to listen very carefully to him.
“It is like this, old man,” he declared. “You did exactly the right thing in putting the detectives on the track of those two wretches, the Charltons. You mark my words, we shall get some most valuable discovery from that source.
“In my opinion, however, you did quite wrong in walking out of that room Ventris Blake has taken so easily, when you had once obtained admission to it. If that huge black shield, bearing The Three Glass Eyes, gave you such an ugly turn as you tell me it did, why on earth didn’t you go up to it, and find out what it was made of!
“Personally, I am a peaceable man, with a great respect for the laws of property, but I could tell you, that if I had seen that beastly-looking object, I should have seized the first chair that came to my hand, and smashed the whole contrivance to atoms. If you had, I am sure you would have learned a great deal more than you did.
“As it is, however,” he went on very firmly, “there is only one thing for us both to do. We must both go at once to Queen Victoria Street ourselves, and, taking yet another advantage of that dear sainted Ventris Blake’s absence, we must go over his garret in a more systematic fashion than you ever attempted to do.”
“But how the dickens are we to get in? I didn’t wait to get the keys from the caretaker. All the doors on that top floor are sure to be locked as tight as a drum.”
“Oh, fiddle-de-dee,” muttered Paul, irritably. “Have you so soon forgotten the lessons that old burglar gave me in Seven Dials, by which he swore there wasn’t a common door lock in Christendom that could defy the tricks in picking he had put me up to? Why, those must be only common or garden locks you’ve got on those doors, mustn’t they? Well, well, don’t say another word about them. Come along with me now—and I’ll take my chance.”
Overborne by his friend’s persuasion, Arthur quickly yielded to this new suggestion, and, snatching a hurried dinner, they again went to an underground station—to Mansion House Station—and before eight o’clock had struck, they found themselves walking down Queen Victoria Street, stealing like burglars up the staircase of No. 375. Luckily, somebody had left a light burning on the topmost floor, and, taking a hint from Arthur, who never to this day can tell why he gave it, although it proved singularly providential, Paul undertook his first essay in house-breaking on the door of the caretaker’s room.
Well indeed it was that he did so, for no sooner had they got this lock properly picked and the door pushed wide open, than they were startled by the sound of voices—the voices, too, of Ventris Blake and of Russell Langford.
“What the deuce are those two men doing, coming here at this unearthly hour?” whispered Arthur excitedly to Paul; but the next moment he found himself gripped tightly by the arm by his companion, who dragged him inside the care-taker’s apartments, and noiselessly closed the door upon them both.
“Hush! If you value your life,” he muttered thickly. “Quick! Take my hand and lead me in the direction in which you fancy Blake’s room to be. We have only a second to spare. Act at once, for they are coming up the stairs now, yet, if we can only get a few slits made in the wall, we may very possibly discover more than we shall ever find out again, about a pair of men who I regard as equal in rascality and wickedness.”
Stirred to the uttermost, Arthur dragged Paul through the empty rooms, now lit only by feeble reflections from the huge electric lights in the silent street beneath. Fortunately, he had a good brain for locality, and almost in a flash, he was able to indicate the partition that divided Blake’s garret from the care-taker’s.
“Now for it,” gasped Paul, hoarse with excitement, and tapping the wall gently, he was overjoyed to find, as he had expected, that it was made of the flimsiest lath and plaster.
With the cunning of the skilled burglar he attacked this partition, and almost in a second, he had managed to dissect two or three inches towards two or three places which commanded a complete view of the interior of the apartment.
As it happened, no time was wasted by the millionaire or by the lawyer when they had once got the door of the apartment open. In response to a rather florid bow from Blake, Russell Langford was the first to enter, and this was a set contrivance, for no sooner had the barrister put his foot across the threshold than the financier stepped quickly after him, and turned and locked the door upon them both. The next instant he struck a light, and before Langford had time to recover the use of his eyes, he had lit three or four of the burners in the gas-chandelier that depended from the centre of the ceiling. Then, as the light streamed over the apartment, a curious thing happened.
All at once, Russell Langford seemed to take in the entire sense of that quaintly arranged apartment—to realise that this was no ordinary office or warehouse to which he had been invited by this friend, for which he entertained such peculiar dread—but was, on the contrary, a diabolically arranged trap to frighten and to conquer him.
With what exceeding bitterness did he remember every aspect, every turn, every corner of that room, in the counterfeit presentiment of which, he now found himself! With what marvellous cunning that fiend, Ventris Blake, had managed to reproduce every detail of the original place that was fraught with a thousand heartbreaking recollections for him! Why, there, even at his feet, the carpet had been tampered with—and yes, just where the light fell from the chandelier in a vivid circle in front of him, just like it had happened to do in the old days, was that dark vengeful-looking stain of blood.
“My God! this is awful!” he gasped; and more like a man in a trance than a creature possessed of all his senses, he felt his way towards the mantelpiece, from the huge black shield above which there glowered down upon him the Three Glass Eyes!!
Oddly enough though, this symbol did not excite half the terror within him that his unseen watchers, Paul Renishaw and Arthur Hudson, had expected. Long he gazed at it as though he would drink to the full the cup of bitterness that had been prepared for him with such fiendish ingenuity and precision—but only by the ghastly pallor of his cheeks, by the twitching of his nerves about the temples, and by that drawn grey look we see sometimes in the faces of people doomed to early death, did he show any signs of the awful anguish that had now taken possession of his soul and heart.
All the time Ventris Blake’s eyes were fixed upon him, with that hungry, strained, compelling look, that seemed to read right through the lawyer’s pale, thin, envelope of flesh to the black shrivelled up heart he so successfully concealed from the world.
At last, even he, the arch-fiend that had so cunningly devised this staggering lesson for his companion, could bear the tense, drawn silence no longer.
“Well,” said he eagerly, “are you satisfied?” and with a swift gesture he pointed to those three brilliant but immoveable eyes above him. And there was a moment’s pause, and then across the room came ringing the answer: “I am satisfied.”
With a long sighing sound, Russell Langford turned away at length from the hideous object that confronted him, but like a man who has suddenly grown old, in an hour of the most frightful anguish, he threw out his hands helplessly, and tottered rather than walked towards the door.
“Your price, man,” he quavered irritably, seizing Blake by the lappet of his coat. “You fiend in human shape, you have done this with some object—now then, tell me your price.”
Ventris Blake broke into a laugh that was hard as the mask he always wore over his features. “You’re a funny chap, Langford,” said he, “and I don’t half like being dragged about as though I were a marionette, but you shall have your answer all the same. ‘My price,’ as you call it, won’t hurt you a scrap; it doesn’t even affect you, for all I ask is that you should just link up your forces with mine and help me to compel your niece, Winifred Pontifex, to be mine.”
“And if I refuse,” snarled the old man, swaying around fiercely, and glaring balefully at his tormentor. “What then? Have you not done enough injury to me and mine without putting this extra load of iniquity upon my shoulders? What, Ventris Blake, are you—man, fiend or devil—that you should so torture me and rend me, that I have felt for years past, were I not such a pitiably poor kind of coward I would take the only refuge that is left for me, and blow out my brains.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t talk like that,” said Ventris Blake soothingly, realising that he had pressed this feeble will as far as it was politic, and that it might be better to go easy for a time if he wished to gain his ultimate purpose. “After all, it is not a very difficult task I put before you. Really, as a price of my silence, it is ridiculously small. Why, even your daughter Vera has promised to aid me—”
“Vera!” exclaimed the old man passionately, “I have no daughter Vera, for I have discovered she has played me false, and that in a few days she proposes to marry that wretched creature of an actor, Jules Prendergast.”
“Never mind about that,” persisted Blake, “I can soon stop any folly of that description. I have got that precious mummer under my thumb, and if I tell him to give Vera up, he will be precious glad to do so, careless whether he breaks her heart or not, for all he cares for is that he should get her cash. But who told you about Prendergast at all?” he added with a sudden access of suspicion, fearful lest some servant of his own had tried to blackmail the barrister.
“Oh, a scoundrel named Judson, a footman of mine, that I intended to discharge, but who seems to have got to know a great deal too much of what is bad for me, to enable me to part with him, and I have had to pension him off with an annuity of fifty pounds a year, just to keep his mouth shut.”
“Well, you have got out of it cheaply,” retorted his cynical companion, beginning to turn out the lights in the chandelier. “Still, whilst you are here, you had better give me an answer to my question—Do you intend to go in with me, heart and soul, and to help me to win Winifred Pontifex for myself?”
Russell Langford affected to think for a moment, but the two watchers in the next room could see that he was already beaten. Now that the first shock of the mystery of the Three Glass Eyes had passed over his head, it was easy to see that his old craven fear for his own safety and well-being had re-asserted itself; and almost before Blake could turn and give him one of those searching, compelling glances of his, he had mumbled forth the required promise.
Another moment, and all the lights in the grim looking garret were extinguished. Taking Langford firmly by the arm, the millionaire conducted him to the top of the staircase, and after locking the door carefully behind them, led the way for them both down the stairs into the street.
Meanwhile, Paul and Arthur were left to themselves, staring at each other in blank amazement. It was quite true they had witnessed the entire interview between Langford and Blake, and had heard every word that was exchanged between them, but somehow they seemed to be no nearer solving the mystery of the Three Glass Eyes than they had been at the time previous.
Of course, they had discovered that the millionaire had some curious, far-reaching hold over the lawyer,—but that Russell Langford had himself practically admitted when they first mentioned Ventris Blake’s name to him, and now they were no nearer to the discovery of its character than was represented by a knowledge of the two prime factors—a shield, bearing Three Glass Eyes, and an early Victorian carpet, stained with blood.
Could Russell Langford have been guilty of any crime of violence of which Ventris Blake alone knew the secret? Could some tragedy in the early life of the lawyer have been hushed up without exposure, and could disgrace hang upon any disclosures that the millionaire might choose to make at any critical moment?
These, and a hundred such like questions, flashed like lightning through the minds of the two comrades as they felt their way out of the darkened rooms hitherto occupied by the drunken caretaker, Charlton, and made once again for the open street.
Swinging off to the right in the direction of New Bridge Street, they soon found themselves near the Bridewell Police Station, from under the shadow of which two men, who had been standing in eager conversation, suddenly started forward.
By the light of a lamp, Paul and Arthur saw that one man was attired in the uniform of the ordinary police inspector; the other, although he wore plain clothes, was obviously a detective.
“By the way,” said the former, pretending to treat the matter as a light one, “do you mind telling me which of you two gentlemen is Mr. Arthur Hudson?”
“I am,” replied Arthur promptly.
“Then,” broke in the detective, suddenly gripping him by the arm, “it is my duty to arrest you, sir, on a charge of the wilful murder of your wife at Scarborough some two days ago.”
“My wife!” gasped Arthur, dumbfounded. “Why, I have no wife!”
“Oh yes, you have,” repeated the detective confidently. “You can’t fool me, for your wife’s name was Aimée Lucille Fausta Hudson.”
Now almost any other man but Paul Renishaw would have broken into a storm of fury when he saw his friend seized by a police inspector and detective and bundled off to the police station without a word of explanation.
As it turned out, however, Paul Renishaw knew the police-methods almost as well as did the police themselves: and in an instant, he recognised the melancholy truth that any demonstration at that point which might be made against this sudden attack, was bound to tell against Arthur himself, even though he might be, (as indeed he was,) perfectly innocent of the charge preferred against him. Therefore, summoning all his powers of persuasion, he begged Arthur very earnestly to allow himself to be taken quite quietly into custody, and also to say no more than was absolutely necessary about the extravagant charge of wife-murder that had been preferred against him.
“Don’t make a fuss, old chap,” he pleaded, taking up a position alongside the detective. “Remember, it is not these men’s fault that you are seized and arrested. Understand, they are simply doing their duty, even though everybody will admit in time that they are grossly mistaken. Recollect also that if you treat them with consideration, they, when they get their chance, will not only be considerate, but also fair and obliging to yourself.”
For a moment, but only for a moment, Arthur was sorely tempted to resist this advice, There is something peculiarly obnoxious to an Englishman to find that he has been laid violent hands upon: and terrible though the confession may seem, we’re bound to record that Arthur’s first impulse was to knock down the man that had touched him, and to tell the inspector that he must be nothing less than mad to prefer so outrageous a charge against him.
Paul, however, had, when he chose to exert it, a curiously soothing effect upon the mind of his highly-strung friend: and almost before Arthur quite understood what had happened, the entire quartette found themselves in the police-station—in front of a long counter, at which an inspector was seated, busily writing in a huge ledger, every page of which was adorned by the photograph of some more or less illustrious criminal.
For at least a couple of minutes, this official went on steadily writing, while the party awaited in a kind of breathless silence. Then he looked up, and, turning to the inspector, he gruffly enquired what had happened.
“Oh!” replied the chief officer, whose name turned out to be Lawton, “we have just arrested the man for whom the Scarborough police telegraphed that long description—Mr. Arthur Hudson, the house-agent, of Cheapside. He has made no statement to us except one he made immediately we took charge of him: and then he denied that the murdered woman was his wife.”
The station inspector smiled cynically, and then turned and looked at the fourth member of the party, Paul Renishaw, whom he recognised. “Hullo, Mr. Renishaw,” he said, in tones that were meant to be very severe, “what are you doing here at a moment like this? You know you have no right to enter the police station when we are charging prisoners, particularly in an important matter like that of wilful murder. Would you please leave, as we don’t wish any particulars of this arrest to leak out at present.”
“I don’t quite see how I can do that,” said Paul slowly, feeling that his position was a difficult and dangerous one. “You see, Mr. Arthur Hudson is my most intimate friend, and he was arrested while we were walking along New Bridge Street together, intent on paying a visit to my chief, the Editor of The Moon. Naturally, I could not see him bundled off to the police-station without coming with him, and I am only waiting now to hear the charge, so that I may go about and tell his friends what a terrible blunder you have made.”
The station inspector looked very severe. “Your presence here is quite against the regulations,” he reiterated; and he pointed significantly in the direction of the open door.
“No, it isn’t,” snapped Inspector Lawton, who much appreciated the tact which Paul had shown in the difficult business of the arrest.
“Then you call me a liar!” exclaimed the other officer fiercely; and for a moment the two men glared fiercely at each other, all the hatred of years of bitter and broken rivalry, flaming forth from the eyes of them both.