“I will try,” said Arthur, now looking very grave. “I will try very hard, indeed. But like every other man in my position, I have made dozens of friends and acquaintances during the last few years—and maybe, dozens of enemies.” Then, somehow, a sudden light seemed to break upon him.
“By Jove,” he said quickly, “I had forgotten one man, who just five years ago warned me he would do me the ugliest turn that ever one man did to another, and yes, now I come to think of it, he is a brother of the very man poor Winifred is staying with at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage.”
Unfortunately, before Arthur could confide to Paul any further particulars about the deadly vendetta which Duncan Kilroy’s brother had sworn against him, years ago, when both of them were in very much the same position in old Allen Palamountain’s business and both were rivals, running neck and neck to inherit the old man’s wealth, they were interrupted by the sound of a rattle of keys in the door of the cell. Another moment, and a burly police sergeant entered, and told Arthur that the time allowed by the authorities had come to an end, and that, not only must all conversation cease, but that Paul must leave the station at once, and Arthur must prepare himself for that long and tiresome journey to Scarborough.
As a consequence, the two comrades had barely time to exchange farewell greetings, but, as they were wishing each other good-bye, they did contrive to arrange that Paul would travel specially down to Scarborough, and again interview his friend if he should chance to be detained in the local police station, or would even travel to York Castle, if that should be selected as his friend’s place of confinement. Meanwhile, both recognised that they had one most urgent duty to perform at once—that was, to find out Winifred, and to learn from the girl herself the reason of her utterly inexplicable silence.
Strangely enough, as the minutes had slipped on, Paul Renishaw had grown to share Arthur’s fears that something must have gone very seriously wrong indeed to cause so long and so suggestive a break between them. Indeed, it was with a heart weighed down with forebodings, that he clasped the hand of his old companion for the last time, and, although he did his best to make Arthur think as lightly of the circumstance as possible, and to look forward to the time when he should be released with honour, and should be able to go and find Winifred for himself, he did not succeed in disguising from himself, that things looked exceedingly black for both of the two lovers.
Almost immediately afterwards, the heavy iron door of the cell closed with a clang behind him, and, passing quickly through the bare white-washed walls of the station for which he had now conceived the most violent dislike, Paul took his way in the direction of the Strand and soon scrambled on one of the red buses that run from Liverpool Street, through Piccadilly, and westwards. At the Circus he dismounted and stepped briskly towards St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage, where he discovered one of the maids hard at work, whitewashing the steps.
No doubt his old failure and his new fears for the actual safety of Winifred lent him quite a fresh reserve of caution. For, this time, he did not make the mistake of asking for Miss Pontifex at all, but simply sent in his card as the special commissioner for The Moon, who had called on Mr. Kilroy himself, “with reference to the malicious reports that had appeared in some of the papers about the scene in St. Sepulchre’s Church, in the hope that the clergyman would enable him to publish the exact facts of the affair, and so put both church and press right with the public.”
Now, clergymen of the stamp of the Reverend Duncan Kilroy—who depend so entirely on an utterly fictitious popularity to keep together their congregation, can’t, as Paul had foreseen, afford to flout any mighty engine of popular opinion, like The Moon undoubtedly was.
Hence, almost before he had crossed the threshold, Paul had the satisfaction of hearing that Mr. Kilroy would be very glad indeed to see him. Two or three minutes later, he was formally ushered into the library, where he found the Reverend Duncan apparently most busy in the preparation of his next discourse for the Sabbath. Once, however, he had got him neatly cornered like this, Paul did not hesitate.
“The Moon,” said he, with a fine intuition of what was passing in the minds of that enterprising journal’s conductors, “has sent me to get an utterly impartial account as to the scene that followed when that woman attacked you in the pulpit. Some mutual friends have told us that, close to the steps at the time the woman rushed forward, was your governess Miss Winifred Pontifex, who, it is understood, is a niece of that eminent barrister, Mr. Russell Langford. As a consequence, any statement of hers will be received with considerable respect, so before I put any question to you, you will greatly oblige me by sending for Miss Pontifex, so that I can get from her the main outlines of her story first.”
“I am exceedingly sorry to say,” retorted the Reverend Duncan who, sad to relate, was never at a loss for any excuse, “Miss Pontifex was so dreadfully upset by the woman’s violence, and so fearful lest she should do me some mischief, that she has been made quite ill by the incident, and has had to take to her bed.”
“Dear me,” retorted Paul sympathetically, although he guessed at once that the man was telling him a falsehood. “That is indeed unfortunate, perhaps, however, you would let me send up a little sealed note to Miss Pontifex, and she could write, herself, an account of what she witnessed.”
“Scarcely that,” replied the Reverend Duncan. “I don’t think I should like to disturb her. You see the doctor has only just left her, and without his sanction, I fear it would be inhuman of me to give her brain and nerves any fresh shock, such as the enquiry you suggest.”
It is wonderful how easy lies like these rise to the lips of unprincipled scoundrels such as the Vicar of St. Sepulchre’s! Happily, Paul was now on his guard, and determined to meet artifice by artifice, a course that has much to commend it when one is compelled to fight people like the Reverend Duncan, who are utterly destitute of honour or of truth. As a consequence, he did not reply for some seconds, but contented himself by looking very grave, and then, as though some sudden resolution had come to him, he pushed his hand into an inside pocket and produced therefrom the bulky letter-case which he always carried.
“It is exceedingly unpleasant for me to have to say, Mr. Kilroy,” he went on, letting a perplexed frown gather upon his forehead, “but The Moon has another reason in requesting you to let me see Miss Pontifex. As it happens, they have received two or three very extraordinary letters, marked ‘private and confidential’ from servants in your own house, alleging that you had a most terrible quarrel with that young lady, and in collusion with Mr. Ventris Blake, you have actually made her a prisoner.”
Duncan Kilroy’s face went suddenly very white. “It—it is preposterous,” he spluttered, starting excitedly to his feet and advancing towards the door, “The Moon has been tricked. Tell me the names of the servants, and I will bring them before you, and show you that the whole story is absurd.”
Here, unfortunately, Paul made his great mistake. Instead of telling the Reverend Duncan that the names of the servants had nothing whatever to do with the allegation, that the point was, was Winifred Pontifex a prisoner or not, he attempted to bluff the Reverend Duncan just one point further—and failed.
“The Moon,” he said grandiloquently, “is not accustomed to act on communications upon which it cannot place the utmost reliance. I therefore demand, sir, that you should produce Miss Pontifex to me, and that I should thus be given an opportunity of finding out for myself how this extraordinary report was set about.”
“And I absolutely decline,” snarled the Reverend Duncan, seizing the only genuine opportunity he had had of bringing the interview to an end. “Indeed I am astounded now at the patience with which I have listened to you. I consider your charges both malicious and impertinent—and I beg you to instantly leave my house.” And throwing open the library door he called one of the servants that happened to be passing, and directed the girl to show Mr. Renishaw off the premises.
Inwardly cursing his own stupidity, Paul left the Vicarage and paced moodily down Piccadilly, realising that on two occasions this unscrupulous parson had been too much for him. For a time too, he could not see how he could get level with his victorious adversary; but none the less, he felt more certain than ever that all was not well with Winifred, and it behoved him now, more than ever, to see her and to find out precisely what indignities had been put upon her.
Baffled and perplexed, he thought at one time of slipping down to Scotland Yard, and of seeing some of the heads of the departments there, whom he knew from old experience, were good and reliable friends. On second thoughts, however, he felt that it would be unwise to make any scandal just at present, and that difficult though it might prove, he must trust to his native wit to extricate him from this new reproach of his own blundering failure.
Suddenly, a brilliant idea occurred to him. All at once he recollected how he had managed to inspect the scene of a notorious murder, by pretending to be a workman employed to repair the line belonging to the National Telephone Company; and instantly he resolved to adopt the same expedient for gaining admission to any rooms he wished to enter in St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage.
Now, as everyone who is acquainted with the crooked life of London knows perfectly well, the men who are the best hands at fitting up a disguise are not, as is generally supposed, the men who make a business of supplying wigs and false noses and impossible-looking beards, and wildly extravagant fancy dresses to the public. As a rule, indeed, they are usually men who follow some other more peaceable, and, perhaps, more law-abiding occupation.
One of the best of these in the entire metropolis at the present moment, is a gentleman who answers to the name of “Larry Owen,” but who speaks with the strongest French accent, has an unmistakable French figure and countenance, and, when he is not pottering about Scotland Yard, disguising some of our best detectives, who is to be found in a dirty little shop off Seven Dials, where you can purchase anything from a white mouse, a lizard, a green parrot, up to the most repulsive-looking bull-dog. Long ago Paul had been able to do this man some slight service in The Moon, when a gang of Hooligans, who had got wind of his popularity with the police, turned up in force and put all his pets to death, and smashed every breakable thing in his shop; and so no sooner did he decide to disguise himself, than he decided to avail himself of the services of the redoubtable Larry Owen.
Luckily too, when he reached the Dials, he found this master of disguises playing dominoes with an ugly little son in the back parlour of his shop. Luckily too, Larry was not the kind of man on whom it is necessary to waste many words of explanation, but with the pride of a genuine artist, he set to work, and turned Paul into as disreputable looking a telephone man as one could wish to meet west of the Tower Bridge.
A few minutes’ reflection while this work was in progress, showed Paul that he was perhaps risking too much in going to St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage alone. Hence, he decided to take Larry himself with him, as a brother workman, and this, it need hardly be said, was quietly arranged directly an extra sovereign had passed. Larry too, did not waste much time in making himself up, and punctually by five o’clock, the two confederates found themselves in Piccadilly, with all the paraphernalia of itinerant telephone men, knocking at the door of St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage.
This time, Larry undertook to act as spokesman, and so well did he play his part, that without a moment’s hesitation, the maid told them to go upstairs, and to get through their work as quickly as possible, as she was busy and hadn’t time to bother to show them the ins and outs of their own business.
Naturally, Paul and Larry did not require a second permission. Almost as soon indeed as the girl opened the door to them, they stalked up the stairs, and, with the skill of practised burglars, they tried door after door, as they mounted steadily upward.
Only one door defied their efforts, on the topmost floor, and behind that they caught the sound of two voices raised in excited argument. One was Winifred’s! The other the voice of the clergyman!
This time Paul did not waste any time on useless ceremony. Directly he found that the door was closed and locked, he pressed his shoulder against the woodwork, and with such good effect, that he himself went tumbling headlong into the room where the Reverend Duncan and Winifred were standing.
“Rescue me, rescue me,” she cried, in a voice charged with emotion, and then, worn out by the hours of torture and imprisonment she had been through, she sank into a chair near the fireplace, and began to sob hysterically.
The Reverend Duncan Kilroy turned and cast an angry glance in her direction. His first impulse, evidently, was to say something cutting and stern to her, but suddenly he became afraid of what might follow, and he swung round and faced the intruders.
“Go outside,” he said, raising his arm in the direction of the door, “you have no right, my men, in this room at all. If you want the telephone wires you should go up the ladder at the top of the staircase, and that will give you access to the roof. There is no passage through here. As for this poor girl, who has just been talking that rubbish to you, I am sorry to say she is not quite compos mentis. We must leave her alone, and then she will quickly recover.”
“Not a bit of it, guv’nor,” stolidly interjected Larry Owen, who, guessing at once that this was the girl Paul had risked so much to save, put down the coil of wire and brazier he was carrying, and placed his arms defiantly akimbo. “Just you understand this we ain’t the kind of men to swallow any fairy tale that may be told to us. We know enough of life to know that blood ain’t a nice thing to see on a young gal’s face, like this, and I ain’t agoin’ to leave the young lady, until I know what made you knock her about.”
And Paul whose first impulse had been to seize this greasy, overfed parson by the scruff of his neck, and throw him headlong down his own stairs, choked down his rising indignation, and struck in with a sentiment most suitable to his assumed station: “Them’s my opinions to a T.” And with a good deal of unnecessary noise, he flung his bag of tools upon the floor with a loud thud.
The worthy Duncan’s expression of disgust at this unexpected attack was really so patent, so complete, that it was almost ludicrous. For a moment he puffed out his cheeks like a grampus, and seemed to dance half way across the room in a series of bewildering little storms of rage.
“ ‘Knock her about,’ you vulgar fellow,” he spluttered clawing the air with his hands. “Did I hear you aright; did you say ‘knock her about’.”
“You heard what I said, guv’nor, right enough,” observed Larry, in a tone of the most irritating condescension. “So just chuck out your chest and explain.” And he folded his arms in the attitude of his favourite hero, Napoleon, as that Emperor appeared in a gaily coloured chromo-lithograph he treasured in a little room at the back of his shop.
Mr. Kilroy was now spluttering like some swimmer, who had overtaxed his strength, and was trying vainly to reach the land. “Don’t you see I am a clergyman,” he cried, his voice growing hysterically feminine under the pressure of his continued astonishment, and sweeping his arms about like a windmill, he tried to call the imperturbable Larry’s attention to his collar and to the cut of his clothes.
“Indeed, I do,” Larry assured him. “And I don’t mind telling you, that is why I am so keen about it. After all, parsons ain’t no better than other people. Often indeed they are worse, so you needn’t work any of that game on my mate and myself. A gal’s a gal, bless her! and if she wants to walk out of this place, that there sweet young lady by the table can do it, and we’ll stand by, and if you interfere, Mr. Parson, we’ll just knock your bloomin’ head off.”
And again Paul felt nothing better to do than to act the part of the chorus, and to chime in with a very fervent “hear, hear!”
The Reverend Duncan did not, however, lack a certain amount of magnificent assurance, and he turned round and relied on this in speaking to Winifred.
“You hear what these rude fellows have said, Miss Pontifex. Please ask them to go away, so that I may tell you very fully the important news I have got for you, direct from Mr. Hudson.” And his cunning little eyes gleamed, as he uttered this last little invention. It was an artistic little touch of his own, and he did not see how it could fail to succeed.
Indeed, as poor Winifred rose unsteadily to her feet, she did indeed waver. True, she had suffered cruelly since this unscrupulous man had made her a prisoner—but woman-like, she feared the Unknown; and then, what would she not risk to receive a message from Arthur himself?
Paul saw what was passing through her mind, and, elbowing his way past the astonished clergyman, (with a good deal of unnecessary roughness, we regret to add, for he gave the gentleman quite unnecessarily a violent punch in the ribs, that sent him in turn spinning against the bookcase,) he made his way to Winifred’s side, and bent down and whispered quickly in her ear:—“Don’t take any notice of him, he is lying as usual. Don’t look surprised either, but I am Paul Renishaw, come in this disguise to rescue you,” and then pretending that Winifred had been talking to him, he again faced the Reverend Duncan.
“I have spoken to the young lady,” he said in rough workmanlike tones, “and she tells me she ain’t agoin’ to stay here, so if you don’t want my mate to go and fetch a policeman, you had better let her go quietly with us—”
“Or,” put in the repressible Larry, who was beginning to feel his conversational powers being silent were being wasted, “we’ll knock your ugly face in.” And indeed he looked, for a moment, so capable of doing this, that with a snarl, Mr. Kilroy turned and hurried precipitately down the staircase, with the avowed intention of consulting his wife. “As poor Miss Pontifex must really have gone quite mad.”
Winifred, however, was so overjoyed at the prospect of this speedy release, that she soon managed to staunch some blood that was flowing from her cheek, and to draw the wound together by the aid of some flesh-coloured sticking-plaster. Then she seized her hat and her cloak, and hastened down the staircase, Paul going in front, and Larry followed behind her, to see that she was not seized again and immured in any other room in the Vicarage.
Fortunately, Piccadilly was reached without any interruption, and seeing how upset Winifred was, Paul forebore to question her, but insisted on taking her to some tea rooms in Bond Street, realising that half an hour spent in quiet surroundings like those would do more for the poor distracted girl than even a brief visit to a doctor. As a consequence, he and Larry, heedless of what the fashionable people they met might chance to think, escorted her to this retreat, and then they chartered a cab and hastened back to the Dials, so that Paul could change his things and return and explain all that had happened to Winifred.
Punctually, at the time agreed, Paul returned to the tea-rooms in the ordinary garb of civilisation, and was delighted to find that Winifred had recovered most of the obvious effects of the shock she had experienced during her imprisonment, and was keen to hear how Arthur had fared since she last saw him in his office in Cheapside.
It was a long and melancholy story that Paul had now to relate to her, but he did it with such kind earnestness and consideration, that somehow the horror of it all seemed to vanish, and, in place of that, he made it appear that all the consequences, tragic though they might seem at first, were inevitable, and yet only led to the complete vindication of Arthur and his swift and complete triumph.
By this means, he got Winifred interested in the network of crime and intrigue into which he had fallen, from quite a new standpoint—interested, as all good women like to be interested, in the best way she could help the man that she loved—and so, almost before she herself realised what a wonderful change had come over her attitude, she found herself planning and contriving how best both she and Paul could work for Arthur’s speedy deliverance.
In this change of mind her experience with the woman who had made that terrible scene in St. Sepulchre’s Church proved a most wonderful aid. Paul at once pounced on this circumstance as one that might prove most momentous in its issues; and, almost as soon as he had got the whole facts before him, he insisted that they ought to set out to work at once to discover the identity of this creature, and see whether they could not persuade her to tell them all that she knew about Ventris Blake’s villainies.
Determining to lose no time, they made their way at once to the Belsize Theatre in St. Martin’s Lane, first to satisfy themselves whether the woman, who Winnie now remembered, produced a card bearing the name of Flora Kaufmann the actress, was, in reality, Flora Kaufmann, or was simply somebody authorised to act in her behalf.
On arrival at the stage door, however, they discovered that the actress had not put in an appearance at the theatre, and was not expected for another hour at least. A judicious bribe of half a crown luckily produced her private address in Hart Street, Bloomsbury; but on calling there, they found themselves again foiled. The landlady explained that a gentleman with a carriage and a pair of horses had called twenty minutes earlier for the other Miss Kaufmann, who alone resided there then—she believed it was Mr. Ventris Blake, the millionaire—and that he had taken this Miss Eleanor Kaufmann to see some curious works of his in Queen Victoria Street, at number three hundred and something, but she had forgotten the exact figures.
Thanking her for her information, Paul and Winifred re-entered the coupé they had chartered, and the driver was told to make his way too in the direction of Queen Victoria Street. Personally, Paul would have preferred to have let the chase stand over at this point until the morrow; but his promise to go to Scarborough that day to see Arthur and report about Winifred was sacred to him, and he insisted on them holding on their course. None the less, try as he would, he could not conceal his fears from Winifred.
“I tell you frankly, Miss Pontifex,” he said in that quick and decisive way of his, “I don’t like this sudden friendship between such deadly enemies as Ventris Blake and this strange woman, who has worked so hard to ruin him. When the lion and the lamb lie down together, as the Old Book promises us, I will believe that good can come from a sudden alliance like this, but not earlier. It seems to me that the millionaire has got wind somehow of the tremendous efforts that this woman has been making to unmask him, and that he has decided he must take some very strong and resolute measures to stop her tongue.”
The coupé drew up with a jerk outside No. 375. With a hurried glance, Paul inspected all the people passing up and down the pavement, and satisfying himself that the millionaire was not approaching, he stepped quickly out of the carriage and assisted Winifred to alight. Then, dismissing the driver, he hurriedly whispered to his companion the course of action he had resolved on, as they had driven down from the rooms in Hart Street where the strange woman lodged. Receiving her promise that she would bravely carry out his instructions, he turned and led the way into the building so swiftly and silently that, before anybody in the place was aware of their presence, they had reached and entered the caretaker’s rooms at the top, the door of which Arthur had, luckily, left unfastened on his previous visit.
Strangely enough, however, they heard no sound of voices raised in the apartment in which they expected to find Ventris Blake and the woman who had made that dramatic scene in St. Sepulchre’s Church. On the contrary, indeed, when they took their places at the holes which had been made in the walls the last time Paul acted as spy on the doings of the millionaire, they perceived that nobody was in the garret except Ventris Blake, who was seated in an arm-chair apparently plunged in the most profound melancholy.
For a moment they suffered themselves to become the prey of a sense of bitter disappointment; but as the seconds slipped on, and the man did not move at all from his position, and at times looked as though he were listening intently for some visitor who had not arrived, they decided that the strange woman had left him for some reason on the way down, but had promised to follow him to his room.
To Paul also, the period of waiting was relieved by his observations of the changes that had been made in the disposition of the different objects in the apartment. For instance, as his glance travelled round almost irresistibly to the mantlepiece he saw that some heavy curtains had been hung over the fireplace, and that no longer there glowered down from the wall that sombre looking Shield of Black, but that in its place had been hung two long crimson curtains. What had become of those Three terrible-looking Glass Eyes?
In vain he scanned every likely object in the room. He could not discover a sign of their presence—unless indeed, they had never been taken down at all, but had been simply masked by the heavy crimson curtains. A moment later, he saw that the old-fashioned gas-chandelier that hung from the centre of the ceiling had also been tampered with, and that the ordinary burners had been removed to allow a kind of arc-light to be fixed at the bottom of the pendant, flanked by a reflector that shone with a glint of polished steel.
Near the chair, too, on which Blake was seated stood a small gate-table, bearing a red mahogany box, attached to which were a number of wires that looked as though they communicated with some invisible electrical apparatus. Paul, indeed, was just wondering what the object of these lines were, when they caught the sound of a woman’s step on the stairs, and later the rustle of some silken skirts, and almost immediately afterwards, the strange woman they were seeking so eagerly entered the apartment. As she did so, she looked around the place with a certain obvious curiosity, as though it recalled some half forgotten memories. Then the millionaire rose and for a time her mind was absorbed by the conversation.
For once the iron audacity of the man seemed to have vanished, and his manner towards this strange creature was timid and differential. With an air as though he were apologising for the severity of the furniture, he drew a chair for her opposite the fire. Then he too seated himself in the chair he had previously occupied, and whether by accident or by design, he rested his arm upon the table, in a position that hid the small mahogany box completely from sight. There was a pause, and then unconsciously, he raised his voice a little louder, so that Paul and Winifred could hear quite plainly all that he said.
“How long, Eleanor, is this to go on?” he asked in a tone he meant to be light, but betrayed in every accent that he was consumed by anxiety and fear. “Haven’t you pursued me enough? Haven’t you become satiated with the revenge you have already had?”
The woman did not deign to answer his question, but put another to him: “Why haven’t you mended your ways, Ventris Blake?” she asked in a low, weary kind of way, as though the subject had haunted her so long that there only remained in her a sense of intolerable fatigue. “Perhaps, one might have forgiven you in those early days, when you were younger, and poor Helen had only just died—but you have never really altered, and so it has become a kind of religion with me now to track you down and to expose you.”
“But,” said the millionaire eagerly, “Flora has forgiven me; she thinks the best not the worst of me.”
“Flora,” repeated the woman bitterly, “what does Flora care about anything or anybody, so long as she makes a successful appearance on the stage, and turns the heads of weak fools like Russell Langford and that latest dupe of hers, Jules Prendergast, who I see has just managed to push her out of the star part she had at the Belsize Theatre? Of course, Flora won’t take any trouble for anybody except herself—but there! she never cared for poor Helen like I did! she never had a true sister’s feelings towards her; and when the poor child was on her deathbed, she never realised what a sacred legacy of hate Helen bequeathed to us when she called upon us to give you no peace, until we had avenged her murder.”
“Murder is an ugly word, Eleanor,” repeated the millionaire, with a shiver.
“A very ugly word,” agreed his companion, “but it’s a true word, and therefore I don’t think you ought to mind my use of it.”
“But won’t even money do anything to atone for the past?” pursued Blake softly. “I am not, as you know, particular to a few thousands, even tens of thousands; I just want to be left in peace.”
“No,” said the woman firmly, “the prospect of being rich doesn’t appeal to me. As a matter of fact, I shall never live to make any use either of my vengeance or of your wealth. It was only yesterday I went and saw Dr. Carpenter, the great heart-specialist in Harley Street, and then he told me quite frankly that the heart disease I am suffering from has made almost incredible progress, and that there is a positive certainty that directly I get any extraordinary fatigue, my heart may break down, and I shall go out like the flare of a candle.”
Was it fancy, or was it really a fact, that, as the woman revealed this dark fate by which she was haunted, Ventris Blake’s eyes flashed for a second, but only for a second, with the light of malignant triumph? When they came to compare notes afterwards, both of those two unseen watchers, Paul and Winifred, agreed that they did, and certainly from that moment, Ventris Blake dropped altogether his soft whining tones, and spoke out with a new air of power and earnestness.
“That being so,” he proceeded, “why do you interfere in my life, on behalf of a scoundrel like this Arthur Hudson?”
“For three reasons,” declared the woman coldly. “In the first place, he is not a scoundrel. In the second place, he was wonderfully good to me when I was taken ill outside his office in Cheapside, when to all appearances, I was a poor, weak, hungry-looking woman, without a friend in the world. He couldn’t have been earning much himself, but I remember he fetched and paid a doctor for me, and finally insisted on hiring a cab and driving me to my rooms. No! you needn’t look cynical like that,” she went on with a sudden burst of fierceness, “he didn’t flirt with me, he didn’t try to make love to me, he is not that sort of man. He was just that bright, strong, frank, helpful kind of boy, we women, who are so weary of the noxious attentions of all sorts and conditions of people, admire most. Perhaps,” she went on more softly, “it is the latent instinct of motherhood within us all. At all events, I felt my heart go out to him and, when I discovered that he was the object of yet another of your diabolical plots, I made it my business to speak out boldly for him, both at the church and in the Police Court.”
The millionaire shifted about uneasily, and finally looked down. “But,” he said with a nervous little cough, “you haven’t told me yet your third reason. Is this some other equally heroic and equally quixotic prompting of your feelings, or do we this time come a bit nearer a solid foundation of a hard business fact?”
“We come upon a question of absolute fact,” returned the woman, and now her face grew exceedingly stern. “That third reason you ask me about is probably the most convincing reason of all. It is this I am making this grim fight for poor Arthur Hudson, because I happen to know who it is that did that murder of the poor creature on the Filey road near Scarborough.”
“You know!” gasped the millionaire, suddenly sitting upright and grasping the table with both hands, to hide the trembling of his muscles.
“Yes, I know,” repeated the woman, “and at the right moment I shall speak.” And so, as though she were desirous to end the conversation, she rose and pretended to re-examine the different objects in the room.
Then, as the millionaire did not speak, she began to talk in a desultory kind of way, as though she would distract his attention. “Dear me,” said she, “now I come to look at it, this room has a strangely familiar appearance to me.
“Every object in it seems to remind me of something—some place—some incident that I have almost completely forgotten.” Then she looked as though a sudden light had broken upon her: “Surely,” she cried, “this cannot be the actual room where poor old Colonel Pontifex and that skulk Russell Langford——”
With a muffled oath, Ventris Blake sprang to his feet. “Enough of that,” he said roughly. “Let us stick to the matter we were discussing first. We can deal with this room and what it suggests afterwards. What I want you to tell me about is the murder of my poor Aimée.”
The woman’s eyes flashed. “Your poor Aimée,” she sneered. “You were not wont to talk of her like that, when she was alive, and I am sure that this is almost the first time you have so spoken of her since she had been dead. None the less, why try to come over me, with this cheap theatrical bluff? After all, I know who murdered Aimée Blake, it’s true—but so do you,” and she swept round with a quick movement and gazed fixedly at the millionaire, who could not stand her scrutiny, and with a fumbling kind of movement dropped again into the armchair.
“Can’t—can’t we come to terms?” he stammered, playing nervously with a little red box at his elbow, and taking care all the time to keep the wires connected with it closely concealed.
Again the woman seated herself and gazed fixedly into the fire.
“Can you bring the dead to life?” she replied, and there was no passion now in her voice, but her face wore a look of grim determination.
“I can atone,” he murmured.
“Repentance is not the quality that suits men of your stamp, Ventris Blake,” she answered with a slow shake of the head. “No! I have sworn my oath and I shall keep my word. So far as I am concerned, this conversation is now ended.”
“And so far as I am concerned,” he snarled suddenly, “the business of this meeting between us, after five years’ vendetta, has only just begun.” And sweeping round again, in the direction of the table, he threw open the lid of the box and pressed some knobs connected with the wires.
There was a rustle as the draperies over the fireplace slowly began to revolve, coiling themselves upward.
Again he pressed a button—and this time the light seemed to shift, the reflector fell, and some vivid rays depressed themselves on the huge Black Shield that had again become visible.
This time the woman shrieked and pressed her hands convulsively to the side of the chair, as though, by catching sight of The Three Glass Eyes, she had suddenly become paralysed.
It was then that both Paul and Winifred recognised that, if ever they were to learn the secret of the Three Glass Eyes, that was the psychological moment. Everything, indeed, was favourable to them. Their presence on the far side of the wall was in every sense a complete secret. They could move freely without a sound betraying their appearance, and they had only to keep their gaze fixed on the holes that had been cut in between the laths and the plaster to command a perfect view of the interior of the millionaire’s garret.
None the less, when the strange woman’s shriek broke out with such startling suddenness directly the curtains rolled aside, and those Three Terrible Eyes began to turn with a quick rhythmic movement up and down, they looked instinctively to each other—dumb with horror and apprehension. After all, this weird creature, they were certain, from the blue, pinched look about her nostrils, was suffering, as she had explained to Blake, from serious heart-mischief, and had spoken the truth when she warned the financier that it needed but a small shock to bring about her death. Was it kind, therefore—was it right—aye, even was it human to let Ventris Blake torture her so sorely, even though the result might be they might learn enough from this diabolical ordeal to save Arthur Hudson from all that intolerable burden of shame that was being foisted on him?
They paused. There was, indeed, just one moment of absolute irresolution when their decision for good or for ill hung evenly in the balance, and when there came sharp cracking sounds like the noise of electric sparks flying to and fro, and of whizzing whirling batteries in use in the next apartment, and they caught the hum of a suppressed excitement as though they stood near the curtains of the operating theatre of a vast London hospital when the surgeons were busy with the knife and Death hovered closely over their heads. Then the sense of common humanity triumphed—as indeed it always does where the tempted are leal and loyal of soul.
“We must stop him,” interjected Winifred in a little, broken, tense whisper, and nodding assent, Paul was just about to step noiselessly through the caretaker’s empty rooms on to the landing where he could effect a surprise-appearance in the garret when both of them were astounded to hear the mysterious sounds cease with alarming suddenness, and yet a third voice in the next apartment—that of some bright, eager and impetuous lad!
Hastily they turned and peered again through the holes in the wall.
This time, to their intense surprise, they found that all at once an extraordinary transformation had been effected in the garret, the crimson curtain had once again fallen over that huge Shield of Black, and the reflector on the gas had now swung into its original position, leaving the room lighted on all sides with a soft yellow glow. Even the little red mahogany box stood closed and useless in its old place on the little gate-table, while the wires which connected it with some unseen but diabolical contrivance had dropped to the floor, and were now lying curled in a confused heap by the side of the fireplace.
And Blake—and the strange woman?
Blake had, it was seen, moved from his seat and was now standing near the doorway with his arm upraised, but this time his fury was not directed against the woman at all, who seemed to have sunk on her knees in front of her chair, burying her face in the cushions whilst her frame was distorted by convulsive sobs. It was the newcomer, a boy, that had excited his wrath—one of those sharp, intelligent news-lads of London who had come in covered with snow with a great bundle of papers under his arm, and who now gazed up fearlessly at the millionaire as though he knew him well, and, knowing him, defied him.
“How dare you?” began Ventris Blake hotly; “how dare you come into this room? I have half a mind to send for a policeman and to give you into custody, for you have not come to trade but to rob I am certain.”
“Oh, stow that,” said the boy carelessly shifting the burden of his papers from one arm to the other. “I ain’t dun anythin’ that matters. I jest ’ears a woman hollar, and in I pops, to find you a kind o’ magic lantern ghost show and a Mr. Sequah rolled into one. Besides, I ’ad a right to cum in. I am a friend o’ Miss Kaufmann there—”
“Nonsense,” retorted Blake, and he was just about to catch the lad by the collar and fling him out when he was stayed by the woman herself, who now rose from the chair, her face drawn and swollen with pain.
“He is quite right,” said she, as she stepped feebly towards the boy and tremblingly but confidingly took his arm. “He is a friend of mine, and a very good friend too.” Then turning to the millionaire: “You know we Kaufmanns, as a family, don’t trust you, Ventris Blake. You may have thought when I came here with you so willingly from Hart Street that I was fooled by your smooth tongue and oily promises. But I wasn’t—although I admit that you have just now given me a very terrible surprise.
“The fact is,” she added, moving still closer to the door, “I have always someone to watch over me these days, and this lad here, George Heritage, happens to be the one, for he has no doubt just arrived to relieve the private detective that always ‘shadows’ me. The detective agency I employ believes in the London street gamin, and with good reason, I think, don’t you?” And giving the millionaire a look charged with very deep meaning, she passed out of the garret and slowly descended the stairs to Queen Victoria Street, closely followed by Paul and Winifred who promptly took a hansom.
For a time, it is true, it seemed as though these two last would have to go the whole distance to Hart Street to come upon her and her sturdy juvenile protector. For one thing, snow had begun to fall rapidly, in thick, heavy flakes that shut out the faces of pedestrians from their sight and lay in solid masses on the pavement and on the clothes of the men and women they passed, rendering all more or less indistinguishable. For another, a biting wind had also sprung up, whirling the flakes madly up and down, but, as the hansom rattled into Holborn, Winifred clapped her hands with excitement for just then the breeze seemed to die down, the throng in the street to lessen, and, away near the top of Fetter Lane, she caught sight of Eleanor Kaufmann walking steadily onward.
A word to the driver, and the horse was whipped up, and a few moments later they succeeded in reaching a point level with the strange woman. They got out and paid off the hansom, and, taking her courage in both hands, as it were, Winifred Pontifex went and accosted the millionaire’s bitterest enemy—closely shadowed by Paul on the one hand and on the other by the news lad employed by the firm of private detectives.
“Have you forgotten me, Miss Kaufmann?” she asked, holding out her hand as though she would compel the other to be her friend. “If so, I at least remember you, and I want to thank you for your good advice about the people in St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage.”
The woman stopped and gazed searchingly at her. “It is a pity then that you did not take it, Miss Pontifex,” she returned, but all the same she fell into step with her. “If you had, you would have saved yourself that ugly spell of imprisonment you went through. As it was, just when I had arranged for one of the servants to be bribed to bring you to me, Mr. Renishaw slipped in and got you out. Although you must admit you did not deserve it.”
“I admit that freely,” retorted Winifred bravely. “Only I want you to understand my position. The truth is, I am absolutely bewildered by the network of crime and intrigue and duplicity into which I have fallen. Just three days ago I was one of the happiest girls in London. As far as I knew, I hadn’t an enemy—hadn’t a care—and yet look to-night where I stand? People tell me that the man I love has not only been married when he professed to be single, but has murdered the poor creature he is supposed to have wedded and deserted. My uncle and my cousin have turned against me, and I have been driven from the only home and friends I have, to a refuge which, after all, most friendless girls would take—the house of a clergyman who you tell me is a scoundrel and, while knowing Arthur is innocent, will not say the word that will clear his good name. Can you wonder, therefore, that I have fumbled and hesitated—”
“I don’t,” the woman cut in quietly but sweetly. “Only this business of the wedding and murder of poor Aimée Blake is so terribly far-reaching in its evil consequences that none of us could afford to look at the sentiment of our position but the fact. And the grisly fact is like the natural law of the spiritual world; evil sows evil, mistakes are mistakes, and bring in their train injustice as well as pain, and if you fail—well, your lover will be hanged,” and she threw out her hands with a gesture of complete certainty and finality.
“Indeed, I will not fail,” gasped poor Winifred choking down her terror and emotion. “I will be brave. I will be strong. I will do whatever I am bidden. Let me tell you that I was a witness of your recent interview with Ventris Blake.”
“And what did you discover?” cried the woman excitedly, stopping at once and facing her companion.
“It was all too bewildering, too incomplete,” muttered Winifred with a low wail. “I learned this much—Ventris Blake has a past of crime the facts of which you are acquainted with and which he would risk his fortune and his life to hide from the world that simply thinks he is one of the most wonderful financial magnates that ever sprang up in America and came to London to solidify their paper riches. What that past is I cannot even guess at. But oh! I do beg you in that we two are women, born to love and therefore alas! it seems to me born to carry the burdens of life and to suffer with our newly sensitised hearts, to tell me at least one thing you seem to know the truth of: who did that cruel crime on the Filey Road for which Arthur has been arrested?”
“And would you act on my word? Would you take up this pursuit of the guilty one for me? Would you explain to Mr. Renishaw how important it is not to lose another moment over the Three Glass Eyes, as we, who know, call them, but go at once to—”
Apparently, but only apparently, alas! in the excitement of the moment poor Eleanor Kaufmann stepped off the pavement on to the horse-road. By this time the snow had fallen to a depth of nearly an inch in thickness and had quite deadened the sounds of all passing cabs and omnibuses. The flakes too were continuing to descend so that the drivers had much difficulty in seeing any distance in front of them—and hence, before Winifred could stretch out a hand to drag her back, the woman swayed and was suddenly caught by the shaft of a quick-trotting hansom and hurled against the old-world entrance to Gray’s Inn.
In an instant Paul rushed up and raised her in his arms.
In an instant the inevitable crowd surged up and closed about them.
Some stranger struck a light and held it close to the woman’s features.
“Pardon me,” he said. “I am a doctor and I am anxious to render all the assistance I can to the poor sufferer.”
But even he drew back with a shudder. “Poor thing,” he cried. “I can do nothing here. She is quite dead.”
“Dead,” repeated a tall man in a whisper to himself, looking from his semi-military bearing like a policeman in plain clothes, but who was really a spy of Blake’s. “That is good. Then her secret dies with her.” And with a quick turn of the elbow he forced a passage through the crowd of terrified onlookers and tore off as hard as he could in the direction of the nearest telegraph office.
None the less Paul again bent over her and tried to find some sign of life in the frame that lay so still in the snow that continued falling lightly over her. Again there was a movement in the crowd, and another medical man appeared, and examined the corpse and shook his head. Only the gruff voice of a police sergeant raised Renishaw from his painful reverie. “Does anybody know the deceased?” he queried as, throwing off his waterproof cape, he bent down and reverently covered up those wide, staring drawn features of the dead.
The newsboy employed by the firm of private detectives, officiously pushed his way forward, and, taking advantage of the movement of the mob who pressed to hear what the lad had to say, Paul caught Winifred by the arm, and deftly drew her on one side, out of the shadow of the street lamps.
“It will never do for us to be mixed up in this accident,” he said in a low tone as they struck out in the direction of the Inns of Court Hotel. “We should have to give our names and addresses and to hang about London until the inquest is over, and, if police court proceedings follow, we might be detained over the business quite a fortnight, to say nothing of the unwelcome publicity we should get from the different newspapers that report the affair. The fact is—I must run down to Scarborough to-night as I promised. Arthur is there alone, without a friend, and hard as it may seem, we may have to pursue independent investigations about the murder of Aimée Blake. If this poor creature and Ventris Blake really discovered who killed her, we ought to be able to find out too: and, with that charge clear and Arthur free, the establishment of the poor old fellow’s innocence in the widest sense, may be easy enough.”
“But may I not come with you to help you?” Winifred queried with a sudden resolution. “It is true I am not Arthur’s wife yet, but in three months I should have been—and I might, loving him so dearly, be able to aid him much.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” said Paul eagerly, anxious that she should not realise how difficult a task lay before them; “but I do not think you could really do anything there just now, except provoke your uncle. My idea was to leave detective matters to detective minds, and now that your situation at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage has proved such a delusion, you should return to Emperor’s Gate.”
“I can’t,” moaned Winifred, clasping her hands tightly to check her sobs, and then she stopped. All at once she saw the part Paul would have her play in this grim contest for her lover’s life—the part of a girl who loved and suffered and waited on, in hope that nothing could quench. Perhaps, in spite of Vera even, it might succeed; it might turn her uncle from an active partisan of Ventris Blake to a friend of the man she loved, one who was determined to rescue him and to put him right with the world.
Was it worth it? she asked herself. Could she not do more with her freedom? Then she caught Paul’s eyes fixed on her with a pleading expression that she felt she could not resist—but, womanlike, she temporised. “Then you think I did wrong to leave the flat when Vera said such dreadful things about Arthur?” she retorted, bending down to hide her face and pretending to brush some snow flakes off her cloak.
“Not wrong,” corrected Paul, “but I fear it wasn’t wise. You see in life none of us can afford to do what other people want. If we did, we should be in a series of endless difficulties, that inevitably would end in our ruin. That is true indeed, in matters of common, honest, every-day existence, and, if it is so in those affairs, how much more is it in manœuvres where you expect treachery and falsehood, and perhaps positive villainies?”
“Then, to apply your maxims,” pursued Winifred, “you believe Vera got up that quarrel specially with me to get rid of me for some ulterior, but wicked motive of her own.”
“I do,” returned Paul promptly.
“And if I had stayed I should have defeated that wickedness?”
“I hope so,” observed Paul gravely, “why not try it and see? At present, unkind as it may seem of me to remind you of it, you have no home. You have no relations to go to. Now, why not return to your uncle, and try to soften his heart towards Arthur and to nerve his brain to resist the infamous promptings of Blake, and the sly treachery of your cousin Vera?”
“And you think I could do good by that ruse?”
“I am certain of it.”
Winifred appeared to waver for a moment, but she had been won. “I will do it,” she cried brightly, holding out her hand.
Paul took the pledge. “And I,” he added, “will help you now, at once.” And turning sharply to the left, he led the way through Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the direction of The Temple Station, from which point, they were rapidly whirled to South Kensington.
Luckily, as Winifred entered the flat, her uncle happened to be crossing the hall. Now, if the reader has got the idea that this man was wholly bad, one object of this story has not been gained. Russell Langford was bad, but he was not wholly bad; he was more weak than wicked. Indeed, had his career taken a turn for success at the start—had he not had to wait until his heart was sick and his principles had died from starvation—he might have been a creditable member of the Middle Temple. But, as it was, he had seen shady tactics pay and shady tactics answer, and so perhaps whilst he was never exactly immoral, his life was non-moral, and he would never have grieved at his sister’s child being turned adrift had not Vera played him false afterwards.
As it was, however, his mind was softened now towards Winifred, and, with almost a creditable show of emotion, he now advanced towards her and took both her hands in his. “My child, welcome home,” he said with great graciousness. “And you too, Mr. Renishaw, I am glad to see you too, because you have brought her, and in spite of the hard things we said to each other on that fated night you came here to dine!”
“And my cousin?” questioned Winifred quietly removing her wraps. “Where is she?”
The lawyer’s face clouded. “Vera is out at present,” he said, “but left a note to say she would not be more than ten minutes late for dinner, but that I was to begin without her. Now you, my child, hurry up and come and take her place. I suppose you heard about that Jules Prendergast business,” he added, turning to them both, the gloom on his brow deepening, “most persons, I find, did. That is how rogues flourish—the right people never hear of their villainies until it is too late. Luckily, the man showed himself in his true colours before much harm was done, and is, I see from to-night’s papers, to marry that old curmudgeon, Lady Desborough, at an early date. But Vera deceived me about it, and relations between us are now very strained, so if Mr. Renishaw will stay to dinner, he may do us both a favour—greater than he can guess.”
“I wish I could,” said Paul frankly, “but the truth is, I am just off to Scarborough to back up Arthur Hudson.” And he looked the barrister straight between the eyes.
Almost instantly, the professional mask fell and hid all the man’s true feelings and expression—but not before Paul had seen something that made his heart give a sudden bound of joy. Just for one second he had caught a look of terror in the eyes of Russell Langford, real, sheer physical terror of the future and the revelations it might hold for them both! Then habit asserted itself, and he was once again the cool calculating man of the world.
There was something intolerably strained and anxious in the looks of Ventris Blake as he sat that night in his study in Park Lane. As a matter of fact, he had only just left that garret in Queen Victoria Street after his encounter with Eleanor Kaufmann, yet, no sooner had he reached the secrecy of his own room, than the bold aggressive front which he had presented to Paul and Winifred, and later still to the people in the streets as he drove in his carriage through the West End, dropped from him like an ill-fitting mask. Now he crouched over the fire, in the evening clothes which he had hastily donned, a prey to a low but intense nervous excitement.
Every uncommon sound that penetrated the thickly-curtained and carpeted apartment seemed to set his nerves on edge. Again and again he would spring up and advance towards the bell that communicated with his secretary’s office, but each time he would choke down his fears and irresolution, and clenching his teeth hard would grimly set himself to wait.
For what?
Five—ten—fifteen minutes passed thus without the arrival of the expected intelligence.
Finally, strained it appeared almost beyond endurance by the silence and the inaction, he rose, and producing from his watch chain a tiny curiously wrought master key, that at first might be taken for an ordinary gold-charm, he went towards a corner of the room. Here, where certain lines of water-colour paintings that had been let into the wainscot converged was a panel in oils that he had picked up once in Florence, and which formed a study of one of the most gruesome objects in Italian street-life—a member of the misericordia who goes about in a habit like a mediæval Inquisitor, and attends to the sick, the dying, and the dead.
For a time he gazed at this as though this particular figure had some strange inward significance to him. Then a hoarse kind of chuckle broke involuntarily from his lips, and, shrugging his shoulders, he tapped the corners of the panel with a curious movement as though he would thus release some hidden finely wrought spring. Indeed, this was precisely what he was doing, for no sooner had he struck the fourth blow, than the panel fell forward noiselessly, revealing a small iron door, which not more than a foot square, yielded to a turn of the key he was still carrying.
Placing his hand and arm in this safe right up to the shoulder, he groped about for some seconds until at length his fingers closed over the object he sought. Then he withdrew his hand with a tiny book, also heavily locked.
His movements afterwards were quick and decided.
With a touch he shut both door and panel, and then, stepping swiftly across the room, he locked and bolted both the doors that communicated with the rest of the house. The next moment he turned to his desk, and, seating himself thereat, he switched on the light of a small reading lamp, and then unfastened the locks of the volume and eagerly glanced at the entries of the pages which had been made in thick bold characters in red ink.
At first the onlooker would have fancied the different items had been written by some doctor, for the pages had been ruled as though the book were a doctor’s case-book with full information in dates and times as to the progress of various diseases. But, as Ventris Blake feverishly turned over leaf after leaf, and on each stood out in startling distinctness the word “Died,” one saw that he was looking at a register, it was true—a Register of Death! And each page was stamped with a sign—Three Glass Eyes!
Strangely enough, however, he seemed at length fully satisfied with the result of his enquiries, for he closed and locked the book, and leaned back in his chair, thinking deeply, aided by his own watch and some figures which he had extracted from the register and scribbled on the flap of an old envelope.
“I think I’m right,” he muttered to himself at last throwing the paper on the back of the fire. “Twenty minutes is the average time for the thing to work. Then allow the man five minutes to get to the telegraph office; give the telegram itself forty minutes to reach Park Lane. Now if ever I ought to receive the news.” And, replacing the volume in the safe, he went and unlocked the doors again and marched into Israel Sawdry’s room.
Sawdry himself was busily engaged just then writing at a table, but against the walls stood a number of tape telegraph machines which were recording the news of the world, as gathered by the different news agencies, and also any private information which his head man in the City thought it wise to wire through to his principal’s home.
This particular instrument was silent as he approached it, but, as he had previously calculated, he had not to stand there many seconds before it began with a wheeze and a whirr to click out this message to him:
“Grover reports sad affair in Holborn. Outside Gray’s Inn, old friend of the firm, Eleanor Kaufmann, swayed off the pavement into middle of the road, was knocked down by cab, and picked up dead.”
“Picked up dead!”
Almost unconsciously the millionaire found himself repeating these words as all at once his demeanour changed completely, the cloud of doubt and suspicion seemed to lift from his face like magic and once again he was the quick alert man of affairs.
“Curious thing those Three Glass Eyes!” he went on in the same monotone. “Somehow, its friends always are picked up dead, but it’s not often they oblige by swaying first against some passing vehicle. Well, well, Eleanor was foolish only to herself this time. I certainly did my best with her, but she would not listen to reason. Now—”
“Now you are safe,” cut in Sawdry, who had crept up unperceived beside him, and had read the message and overheard his half-whispered remarks.
Ventris Blake started, but quickly recovered himself.
“Safe!” he repeated with a little touch of scorn, “Is anybody safe in this cursed London? You know the saying at Scotland Yard, that any man’s life can be taken, sacrificed here, for a sovereign! Well, it’s all very well for us to beat down our enemies like this,” tapping the message on the instrument, “but suppose they try the same tactics on us, what then?”
“They mustn’t,” returned the Jew firmly, “we must not let them.
“Remember,” he proceeded gravely, “your old faith that ‘money can do anything.’ Well, haven’t you proved its truth? Where other great financiers have trusted to bribes and gossip, and failed, you have never waited for news or action second-hand. If you have wanted to know what any man, woman, or child was up to you never inquired from anyone else, you have simply had them watched. Their steps have been dogged, their servants suborned. All they have said and done you have collated so that at the right moment you could strike or hold your hand. Look at Arthur Hudson, for instance, how you are managing him! look at your own huge fortune. No, this secret service idea you struck years ago has, in my opinion, been the secret of your business success—”
“And also The Three Glass Eyes,” put in Blake with a hollow little laugh.
“And The Three Glass Eyes,” echoed Sawdry nervously, but even he glanced apprehensively over his shoulder, as though he were fearful the millionaire had been overheard.
Curiously enough, too, just then there did come an interruption to the conversation. A footman tapped at the door and entered, and announced that Vera Langford had called and wished to see Blake on particular business.
“Shew her into the study,” said Blake, and in a few moments he had followed the man and entered into conversation with Vera.
This time, however, his manner to her was far from cordial. Underneath all his words was a deep tone of resentment against her, as though she had done him some serious injury he was in no sense prepared to overlook.
“What is it now, Miss Langford?” he asked in a quick commanding voice as, ignoring her hand, he thrust forward a chair for her to sit upon, and unpleasantly emphasised the word “now.”
“Something important,” said Vera calmly, although her face was swollen and her eyes were red as with shed tears. “I happened to be in the Belsize Theatre this afternoon when you were talking to Mr. Prendergast about me.”
“Well,” put in the man roughly as though he were anxious to provoke her, “then there is little doubt you heard something you didn’t like.”
“That is quite true,” she rejoined. “I learned the man whom I believed in and loved most ardently was false to me and was intent on marrying quickly, an old woman, a friend of mine, Lady Desborough, so that when some atrocious scandal came out about him in the Divorce Courts he should not be ruined.”
“Well, and what of that? Weren’t you thankful that it wasn’t you he proposed to make a victim of? Weren’t you glad that the friend who was playing you false was going to be ruined and not yourself?”
“No, that didn’t occur to me,” said Vera reflectively, “my feeling was quite different to that.”
“Humph,” growled the millionaire, now seating himself and gazing curiously at Vera. “You girls who are baulked in ruining your lives are odd creatures. Instead of being thankful that you had been saved from social ruin and personal degradation, you turn sometimes on the persons who have saved you, and tear them to tatters. Tell me now—what is your idea? Do you still love this silly, brainless poseur, Prendergast?”
“I hate him,” Vera flashed out.
“ ‘Scorn! to be scorned by one I scorn.
“ ‘Is that a matter to make me fret!’ ” quoted the millionaire, with a sardonic turn of the lip. “Well, and you hate! Good! It’s a nice, healthy, invigorating feeling to have. But what then?”
“I wish to be revenged,” said Vera thickly, and now her eyes filled with tears.
“Revenge!” mused Blake swinging round his chair and looking earnestly into the fire. “Yes, I understand. Revenge! It’s a most powerful force I know in this poor weak tottering human mechanism of ours.
“But why should you come to me about it?” he turned again and snapped—“You have already made nearly £10,000 out of me. I have let you do it—for what? That you should make Winifred Pontifex mine! How have we fared over that? The girl left your flat and went to that old toady of mine at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage, it is true, but she has just slipped off from there, and now we’re worse off than before.”
“But I can go after her and find her. I can persuade her to live with me again,” protested Vera eagerly. “I always could manage her. I have got the knack of appealing to what people call ‘the better feelings’ in her. I can turn her round my little finger with a show of tears, and an appeal to her loyalty and unselfishness.”
“Could you at a pinch bring her and come yourself, to live here in this house,” said Blake suddenly, but hardened scoundrel as he was, even he dared not look at the other girl fully in the face.
“Yes,” replied Vera unblushingly, “but I repeat—I must have revenge.”
“Oh, that is easy enough,” returned Blake rising and facing his companion. “The day Winifred Pontifex comes to live here with you, that day Jules Prendergast and Lady Desborough will begin to rue the day they were led to play you false.”
“Then it shall be this very day,” cried Vera, “if you will set to work and will find out at once where Winifred is!”
And she returned home to find two surprises—one that Winifred had arrived already, and the other that Paul Renishaw too had called and had gone.
Now, as a matter of fact, Paul was painfully anxious to be alone—to get time to think. A quick passage of arms with Langford had aroused a new source of interest in him, no other than the identity of the man who had a better reason for seeing Aimée Blake removed from his path than had Arthur Hudson. Even indeed as he had launched this chance shot at Russell Langford, one name of a possible assassin had hammered itself at his brain clamouring as it were for consideration, although it seemed so impossible a clue that he had not dared even in imagination to follow it up.
Now, however, he was alone. There, in the whirl of London’s ceaseless traffic, his thoughts could not stray and move either in treason to the man he suspected, or fatally suggestive to the release of his own friend. Then—and only then, did he seriously ask himself a series of questions which he realised that once put to himself in that form, he could never rest until it was settled beyond all doubt or hesitation.
(1) Did Ventris Blake, by some foul strategy, gain possession of the Register of Marriages at Peterborough, and place within it pages a false dummy page containing an entry of a ceremony that had never occurred?
(2) Or had he absolutely personated Arthur Hudson years ago in that quaint old Northamptonshire city, and been found out by his wife, and made to take his proper name and place in their married life?
(3) And had he, when his mind was fired with that wild, insane passion for Winifred Pontifex, again personated Arthur Hudson, and luring the poor woman, first to Scarborough, and then off to the Filey Road, cruelly fallen on her and beaten her to death with a hedge stake?
Like a man in a dream Paul paid his driver and taking his ticket for Scarborough, climbed into a first-class carriage and found himself quickly whisked along the Great Northern Main Line in the direction of Grantham, the first stoppage, and Doncaster. To a wonderful degree he had, by the aid of his work as a sub-editor, sharpened his power of concentration; and so for nearly two hours his face made no sign of the terrible mental processes he was passing through, from doubt to hesitation, from half conviction to theories to be tested and worked on.
None the less, all that time he was marshalling all that he knew about this strange case of Arthur Hudson’s. Fact by fact he pieced the truth together—not as it might seem to prejudiced parties like the Scarborough police or to Mr. Russell Langford, but as it might be presented to the mind of a trained expert who was perfectly impartial. And in the end he was bound to confess to himself that, after all, this man of millions with the coarse mind of an American ranchman yet the touch of a Monte Christo, was the one person for the defence to suspect—to inquire about—and, if necessary, to bend every energy they possessed to convict!
Exhausted by the conflict, Paul fell asleep, and not until he was roused at York by the guard, and told that he must change there and cross to another platform to get into a North-Eastern train for Scarborough, did he pursue the matter further. Then, finding he had an hour or so to spare, he went into the refreshment rooms, and only over a steaming hot supper, in which some fragrant draughts of perfectly made coffee figured prominently, did he go back to the problem: Was Ventris Blake the real criminal?
Strangely enough, the more that he pondered over this theory, the more convinced was he of its probable truth. For one thing, the motive so supplied was obvious. At the stroke an impediment was removed in the shape of a wife, and a rival was taken off in the person of Arthur Hudson. The whole plot of the crime, of course, seemed more than human—fiendish in fact—but then, as Paul had often observed from the comparative quiet seclusion and remoteness of the office of a responsible newspaper, men who dabbled in City finance were never men who stuck at trifles. There seemed something in the handling of huge sums of money that contaminated—unless the virus were let off by bewildering outbursts of quixotism, philanthropy, or speculative pomp and foolishness—and, as he knew, Ventris Blake had never spent a copper except for his own aggrandisement and personal satisfaction, and then he had never stuck at thousands.