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Title: Poison shadows

Author: William Le Queux

Release date: December 1, 2025 [eBook #77378]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Macaulay Company, 1927

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POISON SHADOWS ***




 POISON SHADOWS

 BY
 WILLIAM LE QUEUX
 AUTHOR OF “THE TATTOO MYSTERY”




 NEW YORK
 THE MACAULAY COMPANY




 [COPYRIGHT]

 Published in England under the title
 “THE CHAMELEON”

 Copyright, 1927, by
 WILLIAM Le QUEUX




 CONTENTS

 I. A SOUL FOR SALE
 II. THE HOUSE AT HAMPTON COURT
 III. WHAT POLICE CONSTABLE ASKEW SAW
 IV. THE SIGN OF EVIL
 V. SHADOWS
 VI. MISTRESS AND MAN
 VII. THE MAN WITH RED HAIR
 VIII. MR. ASHE IS INQUISITIVE
 IX. THE LURE OF THE SNOW
 X. SKIERS AND “FROTH-BLOWERS”
 XI. A VISITOR AT THE GUEST HOUSE
 XII. WITHOUT FEAR
 XIII. TRUTH OR FANTASY?
 XIV. UNCLEAN HANDS
 XV. THE SECRET CAVALIER
 XVI. MAN AND WOMAN
 XVII. EXPLANATION AND APOLOGY
 XVIII. THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
 XIX. THE DEVIL’S PARADE
 XX. THE SHADOW
 XXI. THE GREEN BAIZE APRON
 XXII. UNDER THE HAMMER
 XXIII. OUR SINISTER WORLD
 XXIV. UNKNOWN!
 XXV. THE DOWNWARD STEP
 XXVI. BEFORE THE DAWN
 XXVII. BY WIRELESS
 XXVIII. A DEADLOCK
 XXIX. FURTHER MYSTERY
 XXX. THE PLOT
 XXXI. REJUVENATION
 XXXII. THE MONKEY-GOD
 XXXIII. CONCLUSION

 ENDNOTE




 POISON SHADOWS

 CHAPTER I.
 A SOUL FOR SALE

“You must be firm, Gordon. It doesn’t matter in the least whether
Sibell loves him or hates him. She must marry him, otherwise we shall
both find ourselves in the cart. So there must be no argument. Don’t
you agree?” asked the woman.

“Of course I agree, my dear Etta. But my ward is stubborn and
absolutely refuses to see him again,” replied the bald-headed,
deformed man who stood at Lady Wyndcliffe’s side at the window of her
private sitting-room overlooking the golden sands and summer sea at
the Grand Hotel on the Digue at Knocke, on the Belgian coast.

“It’s all rot! She must be made to see reason!” replied the slim,
dark-haired, good-looking woman in a flimsy blue-striped frock, which
mutely spoke of the Parisian _couturière_. “Young Otway is all very
well, but he hasn’t a penny, while Gretton inherited over half a
million from his father, who made a satisfactory deal in wool during
the war and by it became Mayor of Bradford. Gussie’s a bit of an ass,
but all the better for us. We both want money very badly. And I’ve so
far worked the cards so that he is madly in love with her. Only we
must at all hazards get rid of Otway. A penniless young doctor is no
good for Sibell.”

“I agree with every word you say,” replied the queer old hunchback,
Gordon Routh, in his high-pitched, squeaky voice. “You and I have had
many deals which have been mutually satisfactory, and now is it not
strange that we should be bartering away the girl’s future?”

“Oh, hang sentiment!” laughed the Countess. “We must have funds at any
cost. Gussie Gretton is rich, and if Sibell marries him we must
squeeze enough out of him to keep us in all we want of this world’s
goods.”

“The Bank of England wouldn’t be sufficient for you, my dear Etta,”
laughed the man. “You’d spend it all, and then try and get an
overdraft. You’re the most extravagant woman I know.”

“What about your own losses at Monte--eighty thousand pounds in one
year--eh?” remarked Lady Wyndcliffe. “I’ve been an infernal fool at
the tables also, I admit. I lost forty thousand francs at the Casino
last night, and have given an IOU to the accommodating old bean who
runs the show.”

“Like myself, you broadcast the handy little slips, scatter them all
over Europe, and they are accepted because of your high title, and the
ingenuity of your press-agent,” remarked the bald-headed, bead-eyed
little man whose humorous smile lit up his countenance always. Then he
looked at her admiringly, and added: “I wonder, my dear Etta, what the
world really thinks of you?”

“I don’t care a Belgian franc what the devil it thinks,” she laughed.
“The public know that the Countess of Wyndcliffe moves in the best
society and is seen everywhere--at Court, at Epsom, at Cowes, at
Deauville, at St. Moritz, and at Monte Carlo. Her photographs look out
upon the suburban buyers of the sixpenny illustrated weeklies, and she
has always one, or perhaps two débutantes under her wing. She is what
the good people of Hampstead, Watford, Richmond, or Felixstowe term
‘in Society.’”

“And thank heaven I’m out of it now,” the man laughed.

His companion drew a long sigh, and her well-arched brows contracted.

“I only wish I were. It’s a wearing life this, with lots of friends,
lots of limelight, and no money. Wyndcliffe is getting quite
impossible nowadays. Billesdon is let to a retired straw-hat maker
from Luton, and I can hardly make enough, or save enough, to live.”

Etta Wyndcliffe--or, to give her her full title from _Burke_, Countess
of Wyndcliffe of Billesdon Hall, Rutland; Cloyne Castle,
Aberdeenshire; 112A West Halkin Street; and Villa Mon Aise,
Cannes--was one of the many bright young Society women of to-day who
lead a reckless, hectic life with the fees they earn by introducing
daughters of rich commoners into the fringe of Society.

Watch your newspaper, and you will often see in the season that Lady
So-and-So gave a dance at Claridge’s for the daughter of Mrs.
Fitz-Allan Smith. It is Mrs. Fitz-Allan Smith who pays Lady So-and-So
heavily for the privilege of shaking hands and dancing with her guests
who go there to obtain a champagne supper gratis.

Etta Wyndcliffe was one of the great crowd of impecunious aristocrats,
with a wide circle of friends, some of whom nowadays open shops, while
others breed dogs, others keep beauty-parlors, and still others manage
to pay their way by taking the womenfolk of parvenus under their wing,
and sometimes presenting them at Court. Etta was young for her age,
slim, refined, with handsome features, dark, penetrating eyes, and a
fine complexion. Though thirty-three, she did not look more than
twenty-five, while she danced and played tennis or golf as actively as
any young girl. She was the second wife of old Wyndcliffe, who went
through Carey Street about a year after he married her, and she had
had to shift for herself ever since.

She lived in West Halkin Street, and managed somehow to scrape along
upon funds provided by the parents of girls whom she chaperoned. The
hectic, adventurous life she led in London during the season, and at
the Continental resorts out of it, had caused her to become greedy and
unscrupulous, for she drove hard bargains with mothers of marriageable
daughters, whom she hawked around in the hope of finding them
husbands. Her enemies--and she had many--said very hard things of
her--how, having grown tired of one particular friend, a hard-up
ne’er-do-well named Eustace Power, she had induced a wealthy American
girl whom she was chaperoning to marry him, and they had actually
split the commission.

As she stood at the hotel window that August morning, the Countess of
Wyndcliffe looked little more than a girl, with a face so innocent and
charming that it gave no index to her insatiable mania for gambling,
or of the fast and vicious circle in which she moved.

“You really can’t be so horribly broke,” the man said. “You got three
thousand when the Clements girl was married in June.”

“And I worked terribly hard for it, I assure you. I also had the
vinegar man’s girl on my hands, as well as Sibell.”

“You got nothing for Sibell, and she’s cost you a lot in lunches,
theatre-tickets, and dances, I know. It was very good of you, Etta, to
take her.”

“And now, just when we’ve played our cards discreetly, the infernal
little hussy--excuse me calling her that, even though I am her
aunt--refuses to see Gussie Gretton again.”

“He hasn’t the best of reputations, she says.”

“What man has until after he’s sown his wild oats?” she asked.

“Well, according to all accounts, Gretton has sown a pretty heavy
crop. He’s already narrowly escaped being cited in two divorce cases,”
said Sibell’s guardian.

“That makes the women run after him all the more,” declared the
irresponsible Countess. “Sibell ought to be proud that he, with all
his wealth, wants to marry her. She’s a darned little idiot. I tell
you, Gordon, I’m fed up to the teeth. Gretton is so infatuated that he
has promised me five thousand on the day he marries her, and I’m ready
to split it with you. Then you’ll split with me anything we get
afterwards,” she said, discussing the sale of the girl’s soul as she
would a business deal.

“I’ll try and do my best. But she’s over head and ears in love with
that young Otway.”

“Love! Bah! There’s really no such thing as true love nowadays. Smart
frocks, a pretty face, and proper environment, and girls think that
men fall in love. The idea of real love disappeared with the hansom
cab.”

“But, really, Etta, there is surely some affection left in the world!”
piped the deformed old gambler.

“Among the common folk, I suppose. Not among us. Marriage nowadays
merely means the uniting of money and poverty, or vice versa. The
modern girl does not begin to know what life is until she’s divorced.”

“And to you, my dear Etta, a neat little secret commission comes in
from both sides!”

The pretty Society adventuress grinned.

“Well, when one has to live on one’s wits--as I have, alas! because
Wyndcliffe is such a fool--one must not be too particular with whom
one mixes. Heaven knows! I have sometimes to lunch and dine with most
fearful crooks and howling dagoes. Only a fortnight ago in Paris I
found myself in debt forty thousand francs at ‘chemmy’ at the Bel Air.
It was three o’clock in the morning, and I only had fifty francs in
the world to pay my taxi to the hotel. Old Ducocq, the director, a
decent sort of paternal crook, took my IOU, but next day he came to
the hotel and demanded as the price of its return that I should
entertain at dinner at the Ritz a pair of American financiers whom I
knew to be clever crooks, and two innocent Englishmen, their
‘pigeons,’ whom they were inducing to put money into some rotten
scheme. In return for the bit of paper I signed, I had to carry out
their demand, and I read in the next day’s Paris _Daily Mail_ that I
had asked the pair of share-swindlers to dinner. No, my dear Gordon,
I’m not sailing in smooth waters, just now, I can assure you.”

“My dear Etta, you’re like me! We are merely gipsies in the world.
When our hats are on, our roofs are on. We live for to-day, and
to-morrow may take care of itself. The tables are my curse, just as
they are yours. You’ll admit that?”

“Certainly I do. I’ve nothing to hide from you, my dear old Gordon. Do
you remember that night in the Cercle Privé in Monte, when I was
broke to the world and you helped me out with three _billets de
mille_. I took to you from that moment, and I even tried to save you
from plunging as you did. But you wouldn’t hear me. I don’t blame you,
my dear Gordon. Why should I? I listen to nobody myself. That’s why we
are both so damnably hard up and are kindred spirits--eh?”

“Hard up! Why, at this moment I have only a couple of hundred francs
to my name,” said the hunchback, who had run through a fortune. “I
don’t see how I’m going to pay my hotel bill.”

“I’m in just the same box,” replied her smart little ladyship. “We
must raise it from somewhere even if I have to get a little loan from
Gussie.”

“A bit on account of commission, eh?” laughed the man.

“If you go to the tables you can always ask a friend for a loan,
making a run of bad luck the legitimate excuse. It doesn’t then look
as though you really are hard up--only temporarily embarrassed,” said
the Countess, pulling a wry face. “But,” she added, “I’m chronically
affected that way.”

Suddenly the door opened and a bright-faced, fair, shingled-haired
girl in a flimsy summer frock burst gaily into the room, greeting her
guardian, and then turning to her aunt, she said:

“You’re up early, auntie! Why, it must have been nearly three when we
left Roberts’. I went for a walk by the sea after that. It was simply
gorgeous.”

“With Gussie?”

“No. With Leonard Capel. We’re entering for the tango competition at
the Memling to-morrow night.”

The Countess and the hunchback exchanged glances.

“I don’t think, Sibell, you should go for nocturnal rambles with a
stranger,” said the Countess reprovingly.

“Why not, auntie? Several other girls went for walks with their
dancing-partners,” remarked Sibell. “Besides, it isn’t any worse than
dancing in a night-club with some dago you’ve never set eyes upon
before and allowing him to pay for your supper,” she added meaningly.

Etta knew at what the girl hinted. They had both danced with a rich
young Argentine, whose name they did not know, at the Florida Club in
London one night a month before, and he had paid sixteen pounds for
supper for the three.

But Lady Wyndcliffe led a hectic life paid for by those she took
beneath her aristocratic wing, and, after all, in the course of her
butterfly career she had done much more risky things than that.

Sibell Dare was extremely pretty, with a sweet, intelligent
countenance, big, wondering eyes of childlike blue, a small mouth with
full, red lips that required not the application of lip-stick, and a
slim, supple figure the grace of which had been improved by constant
dancing. After Cheltenham College, she had been two years in Paris,
and now she was as smart and attractive a girl as could be found in
all London. Her aunt, the Countess, had taken her from Routh’s home at
Cookham and introduced her into Society, where she had many admirers,
of whom Augustus Gretton was the most ardent.

She, however, cared for none of them, being devoted to Brinsley Otway,
a struggling young doctor practising out at Golder’s Green. They had
met at the house of a married school-friend up at Hampstead two years
before, and had been lovers ever since.

“Leonard Capel wants me to go to Ostend to spend the day. I’m going,”
said the girl, feeling somehow that she had interrupted a conversation
between her deformed guardian and the Countess.

“My dear child! Why, you hardly know the man!” Etta chimed in quickly.
“If you want to go to Ostend, why not accept Gussie’s invitation to
motor you there? I heard him ask you yesterday.”

“Well, just because Gussie doesn’t interest me at all. He’s such a
he-haw, superior person that I have no patience with him. I tell you
frankly he bores me stiff, for he regards himself as very superior,
and, after all, his father only started life as a cheap tailor. My
father was, at least, a man of independent means.”

“I’m glad you are proud of your birth, child,” said the old man in his
curious voice. “But nowadays you must remember that men are judged
only by their pockets, not by their ancestry. Personally, I think
Gussie a very excellent and worthy fellow.”

“When I have a husband--if that time ever comes--I shall want him all
to myself, uncle, and not share him with half a dozen women, as
Gussie’s wife must,” replied the high-spirited girl frankly.

“A man, when he marries, gives up all his feminine entanglements,”
declared Etta. “Look at old Lord Ushaw, one of the worst _roués_ in
all Mayfair. He married little Ena Urquhart, to whom I introduced him,
and now there’s no happier pair in all England.”

“An exception does not make the rule,” laughed the girl. “But I want
you both to be reassured upon one point--that I shall never marry
Gussie Gretton--even if there isn’t another man in the world.”

The Countess pursed her thin carmine lips at the girl’s open defiance,
while her guardian turned away to conceal his annoyance.

“Well, I think you’re a little idiot!” declared Etta, who always spoke
her mind to the girls she chaperoned. “You may never have the chance
to marry such a charming and wealthy man. Brinsley Otway is not to be
compared with him; besides, he has only the few guineas he earns by
doctoring. It wouldn’t buy you your shoes.”

The girl paused for a few moments, and, noticing her guardian’s head
turned away towards the sunlit sea, exclaimed:

“Well, auntie, we shall never agree upon the point, so why discuss it
further? I’ll be back to dinner. We’re lunching at the Continental in
Ostend, and going to the Casino afterwards. Bye-bye, uncle! Cheerio!”

And the girl went out, closing the door after her.

“That seems farewell to all our hopes, Etta, doesn’t it?” remarked the
old hunchback despairingly.

“I don’t know,” replied the well-dressed woman in a hard, determined
voice. “We must assume different tactics. I, for one, don’t intend to
be beaten, and I’m sure Gussie doesn’t.”




 CHAPTER II.
 THE HOUSE AT HAMPTON COURT

Three months had gone by.

The hunchback Routh and his ward were back at home at The Myrtles, a
pretty, rose-embowered cottage situated at the end of a garden that
ran down to the picturesque Thames close to Cookham.

It was not yet eight o’clock in the morning, and Elsie, the stout
maid-of-all-work, had placed the breakfast on the table of the cosy
old-world sitting-room. Sibell, looking charming in her cotton gown,
sat in the deep window-seat reading a letter she had just had from
Brinsley Otway while she waited for her guardian to return from his
morning walk.

Besides the letter from her lover the girl had received a second
letter from a firm of solicitors, Harrington, Bailey, Marsham & Keys,
of Bedford Row, London, informing her that by that post they had
written to Mr. Gordon Routh and that he would inform her of the
contents of their letter.

The letter in question she had placed beside old Mr. Routh’s plate.

A few minutes later the hunchback came in with a cheery greeting, and
before he sat down to breakfast tore open the letter and read it.

“My dear Sibell!” he gasped. “Think of it! Your old Uncle Henry has
died in Brisbane, and has left you the whole of his fortune and all
his property!”

The girl stood staring at him, scarce believing the truth.

“Poor Uncle Henry dead!” she cried. “Why, I’ve heard it said that he
had twenty thousand a year!”

“Quite. His property was a very valuable one. Besides, he inherited
your Aunt Henrietta’s money also. But the lawyers say that according
to his will, dated two years ago, all is left to you. By Jove, Sibell!
you’re the luckiest girl in England!” added the old man.

“Well, if I am to have Uncle Henry’s money, I won’t forget you,”
declared the pretty girl affectionately. “You’ve been a father to me
ever since I was a tiny tot, and I know after you lost all your money
how difficult it has been to make both ends meet. This place, for
instance, is pleasant enough in summer--but it isn’t like Curzon
Street.”

Gordon Routh read the letter again, and said enthusiastically:

“Well, after this good news let’s have breakfast and run up to town
and see these lawyers. They ask you to call upon them as soon as
convenient. They were your father’s lawyers, and I know old Harrington
very well.”

They ate their meal hurriedly, and Sibell rushed upstairs, changed
into a town kit, and at eleven o’clock they alighted from a taxi in
Bedford Row, that broad street of dismal lawyers’ offices in the
vicinity of Gray’s Inn.

Without ceremony they were ushered into the private room of Mr.
Alexander Harrington, a white-haired old solicitor, head of the
well-known firm, who greeted them, and, producing a file of papers,
addressed Sibell, saying:

“No doubt my letter came as a surprise to you, Miss Dare. My late
client, Mr. Henry Dare--who, as you know, has lived abroad for some
thirty years or more--died on June 10th last at Brisbane, and I have
his will here, by which you are sole legatee under a certain condition
which I think you will not find very irksome. The estate is a very
considerable one, consisting of railway securities, a quantity of
valuable house property in the West End of London, the family estate
at Coningsby, near Wotton-under-Edge, and the old Guest House at
Hampton Court.”

“I’ve heard that the place has been closed for about thirty years,”
remarked Sibell’s guardian.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Harrington. “According to the terms of the will,
the contents can be sold, and Miss Dare has to refurnish the house and
live in it.”

“Why?”

“Who knows?” asked old Mr. Harrington, arching his grey brows. “My
late client was a somewhat eccentric man. Possibly you know the
romance and tragedy connected with the Guest House?”

Sibell declared that she was in ignorance.

“Well, when I was a young man,” said the old solicitor, “Mr. Beeforth
Dare, a client of my father, met with a fatal accident in the hunting
field early in 1895, and his son Henry, aged twenty-one, succeeded
him. The Guest House at Hampton Court, together with its original
Elizabethan furniture, was left to him as one of the ancestral homes
of the Dares, and just at that time your Uncle Henry fell in love and
became engaged to marry Mary Forrester, one of the Forresters of
Glencree. A week before the date fixed for her marriage she went down
to Hampton Court to stay with her fiancé’s mother, when, while out
walking in Bushey Park, she was suddenly taken mysteriously ill, was
carried back, and died within an hour. An autopsy was held, and the
poor girl’s death was declared to be due to heart disease.

“This so upset your Uncle Henry that he had the house at once closed,
just as it stood, without moving anything. His mother went to live in
London, while he went abroad to his brother John who, after a somewhat
disgraceful career, had gone out to the Malay States as an
assistant-manager of a rubber plantation. For three years my client
lived in Singapore. Then he travelled from place to place for over
twenty years, never returning to England, and he has unfortunately
died in Australia. Two years ago he called me to Paris, where, at the
Hôtel Continental, I executed his will.”

“Then, according to its terms, I am compelled to live at the Guest
House?” asked the girl, naturally much interested.

“That is so. If you fail to do so, one third of my late client’s
property goes to the London Hospital, one third to the Middlesex, and
the remainder to your guardian, Mr. Gordon Routh,” said old Mr.
Harrington. “When he was making his will I queried the clause, but he
said he intended to see you and explain his reasons why he wished you
to live at the Guest House. He has unfortunately died before he could
do so.”

“But as he hated the place himself it is hardly fair to expect my ward
to live there, is it?” exclaimed the hunchback in his shrill voice.

“I admit, it is not. But the house, when reopened, will be found to be
a very quiet and pleasant residence. It must, of course, be very dirty
and neglected at present. The door has never been opened for about
thirty years. The furniture is antique, and no doubt in a very bad
state. If it were mine I should sell it all by auction, and have the
place redecorated and refurnished.”

“That’s what I must do,” Sibell said.

“Very well. Then I will give the matter over to the firm of estate
agents who have had it in hand, and you can go and inspect the place
and pick out anything you wish to keep. At the same time, I will take
steps to prove the will immediately, as all the formalities have been
observed in Australia.”

“The place was the scene of the great blow which befell my Uncle
Henry. I hope its possession will not be harmful to me,” remarked the
happy girl, with a nervous laugh.

“Why should it be?” asked the old solicitor. “The death of my late
client’s fiancée was a natural event, and might, of course, have
taken place anywhere.”

That same afternoon Sibell and her guardian took a taxi through
Hammersmith and Richmond to Hampton Court, where they had no
difficulty in finding the ancient red-brick mansion, an old Tudor
place built at the same time as Hampton Court Palace itself, standing
back behind rusted railings in its neglected grounds, with great
spreading oaks and chestnuts. The roomy old house, with its mullioned
windows and high chimneys, was half covered with ivy, which had so
climbed that in one part it overspread the roof. The windows were
mostly boarded up, the carriage-drive overgrown with bushes and weeds,
and the broad stone steps leading to the portico were deep in moss and
lichen.

From two windows on the ground floor the boards had rotted and fallen
away, disclosing ragged holland blinds that were once yellow, but now
black and stained; while the huge, rusty padlock and chain on the gate
told their own tale.

They of course could not enter the place, but even on that bright
autumn afternoon its exterior looked terribly neglected, depressing,
and mysterious, though the view afforded of Bushey Park, its deer and
its famous avenue of chestnuts, was most picturesque and charming.

In the immediate vicinity were several other old-world houses, all of
them prosperous-looking and well kept, but the Guest House, the scene
of that broken romance of long ago, presented a sorry appearance of
neglect, a derelict in that quiet, peaceful backwater of modern life.

“When it is put into order, repainted and redecorated, it will be a
very fine residence,” declared old Mr. Routh, looking through the gate
into the weedy wilderness that was once a garden.

The girl standing at her guardian’s side reflected. The falling leaves
of the great trees were stirred in the golden autumn sunset, and from
somewhere came a sharp bugle call from the barracks in the vicinity.
Her eyes were fixed upon the heavy oak door, grey and weather-beaten,
that door which had not been opened for thirty years to admit light
and air to the deserted place.

What did that house of mystery contain for her? It was her possession,
hers by right, and in order to secure her splendid inheritance she
must live within those time-mellowed, red-brick walls.

The fair-haired girl in jumper and skirt drew a long breath.
Something--she knew not what it was--warned her of some sinister
influence that was exercised there. She was no believer in psychic
forces. Many of her silly companions had attended séances and
believed in spiritualism, but she, a level-headed, intelligent girl,
had never believed in what she termed the “bunkum” of it all. There
were, she admitted, certain secrets of Nature hidden from mankind, but
discovered in modern times--the mysteries of steam, of electricity, of
the internal combustion engine, aeronautics, submarine navigation,
wireless communication, and radio-television. But the supernatural she
had always ruled out, even though the Countess of Wyndcliffe, to be up
to date and in the swim, was essentially “psychic”--as the term is
known in Society--and she had been compelled to follow her.

That night the old gambler and his protégée returned to Cookham,
naturally elated at the day’s surprises. Sibell, instead of a needy
girl dependent upon the old gambler’s slender means, was now a
considerable heiress and her own mistress, hence she sat down and
wrote to her lover, Otway, a brief résumé of the good news and of
her day’s doings.

In the issue of the _Richmond and Twickenham Times_ on the following
Saturday there appeared a letter above the signature “Scrutator”
headed “The Guest House, Hampton Court,” which created a good deal of
local interest, and a cutting of which Mr. Harrington sent to Sibell.
The letter read:


 “It is understood that the Guest House at Hampton Court is at last to
 be reopened, after being closed by its former owner, Mr. Henry Dare,
 thirty years ago. The house was built in 1541 for the reception of
 visitors who could not be entertained in the Royal Palace, but
 tradition has it--and the facts have been recorded by the
 archæologists Emberley and Wright--that certain curious phenomena
 were observed there during the eighteenth century.

 “According to the earliest record, preserved in the Record Office in
 London, it was purchased in 1595 by a French nobleman, the Marquis
 D’Aire of Aire, a town in Gascony, who was French Ambassador to Queen
 Elizabeth--whose descendants afterwards anglicised their name to Dare.
 From time to time at least two sudden and mysterious deaths took place
 within its walls, culminating in the tragic death of the fiancée of
 the late owner, a pretty girl of twenty-one named Mary Forrester, who
 one day in October 1895 was taken suddenly ill while on a visit when
 walking in Bushey Park, and died in a chair in the drawing-room in her
 lover’s arms.

 “A very similar incident occurred in the house in question in 1784, on
 a day when George III drove down from London to Hampton Court to
 receive one of the Spanish Princes. On that day, after leaving the
 Palace, the Marquis Henri D’Aire, in whose possession the house was
 then, was taken suddenly ill on descending the stairs, and expired two
 hours later from causes which the doctors could not ascertain.

 “To archæologists and others the reopening of this house of mystery,
 after having been closed for so many years, will be of considerable
 interest, as it is known to contain much valuable Tudor furniture and
 many objects of art brought from France by the ancestors of its late
 owner, to whom its possession brought the great tragedy of his life.”


On receipt of the cutting Sibell went up to London and showed it to
Brinsley Otway, whom she found in his surgery in his small corner
house at Golder’s Green. The dark-haired, clean-shaven, alert young
man who had distinguished himself at Guy’s and been fully qualified
about three years before, stood in his rather shabby consulting-room
and read it over carefully.

“It is most interesting,” he said. “We must find the writer, who no
doubt can give us some further information.”

That afternoon he gave over his work to a friend, and a visit to the
editor of the newspaper at Richmond revealed the fact that the writer
was a Mr. Geoffrey Sharp, long a resident at East Molesey, on the
opposite bank of the Thames to Hampton Court, and a well-known local
antiquary.

That same evening Sibell and her tall, athletic lover called upon the
white-haired old gentleman, who, as soon as Sibell had introduced
herself as the heiress of the late Mr. Henry Dare, at once became
communicative.

“The Guest House is of great interest in many respects,” declared the
old man, peering at her through his steel-rimmed spectacles as he sat
in his book-lined den. “It is mentioned by several authorities as the
scene of several--well--accidental and unaccountable deaths.”

And he showed them two large volumes by noted antiquaries in which
mention was made of the place and the mysterious occurrences.

“But, my dear young lady,” he added, “of course there are many other
houses around which evil tradition has arisen. Much of it has been due
to ill-natured reports spread long ago by neighbors who, disliking the
owners of the premises, invented all sorts of stories in order to
depreciate the value of the property.”

“Have there been any other stories regarding the place?” inquired the
girl eagerly.

“Er--well--nothing that has ever been substantiated except the sudden
deaths which were probably mere coincidences,” replied old Mr. Sharp.
“Therefore, if I were you, I would not allow the matter to worry you
in the least. When the place is cleaned and redecorated it will no
doubt prove a most delightful old-world residence, and I, for one,
hope you will one day marry and enjoy it.”

The girl exchanged glances with her lover, blushed, and thanked the
old man for his good wishes. Then, later on, they left.

On the following morning Mr. Herbert Gray, junior partner in the firm
of Shalford, Stevens & Gray, the well-known estate agents and
auctioneers of Kingston-on-Thames, arrived at the rusty iron gate of
the Guest House, accompanied by three men, namely, two of his clerks
and a local locksmith. The great old padlock was so rusty that it
could not be opened, hence the steel chain had to be filed and broken,
an operation which took nearly an hour.

Then the quartette of explorers mounted the moss-grown steps leading
to the portico, but after thirty years of neglect the key would not
turn in the lock. So with a crowbar the grey old oak door was forced,
and from the dingy interior came a dank, mouldy whiff of stale air.
Everywhere in the hall hung great blankets of dusty cobwebs which
swayed in the wind admitted through the open door.

The place was in semi-darkness, therefore the workman, aided by the
two young clerks, opened the shutters and windows of room after room,
admitting light and air, and revealing the hopelessly neglected
condition of the house, with its marvellous collection of Elizabethan
furniture, the upholstery of which, like the tapestry and carpets, was
ragged and decaying. Through the dirt-encrusted windows of ancient
green glass set in lead, the weak autumn sunshine tried to struggle,
falling instead upon the moth-eaten carpets.

In the big dining-room there still remained upon the long table with
great carved legs a cloth that had once been white, and whereon stood
blackened silver bowls that had once contained fruit, an empty
champagne bottle, and three dusty glasses. Everything had been left
just as it was on the day of the death of Henry Dare’s poor little
Victorian fiancée, Mary Forrester.

“By Jove!” remarked the auctioneer to one of his clerks. “What a
chance for collectors! A lot of this must go to Christie’s. Look at
that tallboy yonder, that fifteenth-century credence, and that
Carolean day-bed!”

Half-an-hour or so, with their coats off, they spent opening the
ground-floor rooms and examining the dusty contents, getting their
hands and faces covered in dust and dirt. Now and then they heard the
sounds of scurrying rats behind the old oak panelling, while ever and
anon great wreaths of cobwebs, swaying in the wind, were torn away and
fell.

For them all, even used as they were to enter old houses, it was a
strange experience. As a connoisseur of antique furniture, Mr. Herbert
Gray realized the considerable value of certain “museum pieces,” as
they are called in the trade. He saw that more than one piece of Tudor
and Elizabethan furniture would be welcomed in the national collection
at South Kensington, and his business mind anticipated a fat
commission from the sale of “the valuable contents” of the ancient
house.

From the spacious, stone-flagged entrance-hall ran a broad oaken
staircase with low steps, worn thin by the tread of generations of the
D’Aires. Up them the all-powerful Cardinal Wolsey himself, and
afterwards Thomas Cromwell, the arch-enemy of the Papists and
destroyer of monasteries, had often ascended to visit the Ambassador,
the Marquis Louis D’Aire, in the long withdrawing-room on the first
floor. And up those same stairs went the auctioneer and his assistants
on their journey of investigation.

The junior partner of the firm led the way, examining with
deliberation some fine family portraits by Kneller, Romney, and Sir
Peter Lely as he went, and upon the wide landing came to an open door
leading into a great dark apartment.

Very soon the five long windows of the huge room were unshuttered,
revealing the spacious withdrawing-room, the walls of which were
covered with ancient tapestry, which hung ragged, forlorn, and
rotting, some magnificent old furniture, including an early satinwood
spinet of genuine Louis XIV and some George I chairs, with carved
cabriole legs, a lacquer screen inlaid with jade, soapstone, and
agate, and a quantity of dusty but valuable old china. For the first
time for thirty years the light of day fell into that apartment, and
the sickly beams of the sun gave it an aspect of dismal bygone glory,
of an age long past and forgotten.

“What a magnificent room!” remarked Mr. Gray, as he crossed it and,
standing at one of the windows, gazed round in admiration upon some
exquisite pieces of Elizabethan furniture, all original and
unrestored, as they all were, also three Chinese vases with covers of
the Yung Cheng period.

For a second he paused, and, placing his hand upon his chest, he
glanced out of the dingy window into the neglected garden below, a
tangle of bushes and weeds.

Then of a sudden, before anyone could approach him, he was seized by
an inexplicable faintness, and, staggering across the room, sank into
an old arm-chair upholstered in faded crimson velvet.

“I--I’m ill!” he managed to gasp to his three companions. “Oh! the
pains--pains--around my heart! Oh! It’s agony!”

“Get a doctor--quick!” cried one of the clerks, while the other dashed
out to the nearest telephone, leaving the locksmith and the chief
clerk at his side.

The pair endeavored to rouse him, but his face had gone as white as
paper, and, staring fixedly, he lay back inert and motionless in the
chair. Once he drew a long breath, convulsions shook his frame, and
then he remained white and still.

Within ten minutes an elderly doctor, who arrived in a car, was at his
side, but after a brief examination he raised his head to the three
anxious men, and said:

“A very serious heart attack! I hope it may not prove fatal. But,
gentlemen, I cannot conceal from you the fact that he may not
recover!”




 CHAPTER III.
 WHAT POLICE CONSTABLE ASKEW SAW

The doctor, whose name was Clements, dashed in his car across the
bridge to his surgery in East Molesey, where he snatched up some drugs
and restoratives, and ten minutes later had recrossed the river and
was again beside his unconscious patient.

By dint of constant and unremitting attention, lasting for over two
hours, the stricken man was brought back to consciousness, and
presently was able to describe his symptoms.

“I believe this is an accursed house!” he said. “I felt a curious
dizziness as soon as I entered this room. Though I said nothing, I
felt a strange sensation in my arms, which spread slowly across my
chest until a sudden spasm shot through my heart, causing me to hold
my breath. Time after time I felt the pain repeatedly, until it became
excruciating. I couldn’t get my breath, and suddenly I was plunged in
darkness and knew nothing more.”

“Have you ever had similar attacks before?” asked Dr. Clements,
standing beside the patient’s chair and holding his hand.

“Never. It is the first--and I hope it will be the last,” he replied,
smiling faintly.

“Well, I must run you home in the car, and you must keep quiet for a
few days. I will examine you to-morrow,” said the doctor. “I think you
may be suffering from what we term false angina--nothing to be really
alarmed about.”

“I have never experienced such curious pains in my arms and chest,”
Mr. Gray declared. “I’m forty, and have had excellent health up to the
present.”

“The heart is always a mysterious thing,” remarked Dr. Clements.
“While every other organ of the body may be in perfect order, the
heart may be seriously affected and give no warning until suddenly
death intervenes. Therefore nobody should ever boast of his good
health. It is always dangerous to do so.”

Hence, about two hours and a half after Mr. Herbert Gray’s sudden
illness, he was conveyed by the doctor to his home at Surbiton, he
giving strict injunctions to his clerks that no word was to be said in
the office concerning his mysterious seizure.

The house having been opened forcibly, the locksmith that evening
placed a new Yale latch upon the front door, while an ex-constable
named Farmer, who frequently became caretaker on premises for which
the firm of Shalford, Stevens & Gray acted as agents, was placed in
charge.

The autumn twilight was falling as the stout, round-faced Farmer was
standing alone on the moss-grown doorstep smoking his pipe, when
suddenly a police constable on his beat made his appearance.

Knowing the house so well, he was naturally surprised to see the
shutters open and the caretaker at the door. Instantly he recognised
him as an ex-constable of his own Division, and, approaching,
exclaimed:

“Hulloa, Dick! What’s up here?”

“I dunno! They seem to have opened this old place for some reason.
It’s in a horrible state o’ dirt. I’ve been half choked with dust and
cobwebs. Come in and have a liker.”

Thus invited by his friend Farmer, Police Constable Askew of the T
Division Metropolitan Police, followed him into the hall, dark, dusty,
and mysterious in the fading light.

“I don’t like this place,” Askew said, glancing around. “It’s
haunted.”

“Haunted be blowed! You aren’t afraid of ghosts, are yer?”

“I don’t know,” replied the constable in an uncertain tone. “I don’t
like this house--and never have ever since I’ve been in Hampton.”

“Only because it’s been shut up a long time,” replied Farmer. “I’ve
lived in lots of old houses since I went on pension, and I’ve never
seen anything more terrifying than a rat or two, or perhaps a bat.
I’ve heard lots of noises that I couldn’t account for--but noises hurt
nobody. I tell yer, Askew, you haven’t done twenty-eight years on the
streets as I have, but you’ll never see anything uglier than your own
self. And that’s the truth!”

“That’s all right,” replied the younger man in uniform. “But I’ve seen
something in this here place that I don’t like at all. I haven’t told
anybody, because they’d laugh at me, a constable. At the section house
they’d say I was drunk, and the subdivisional inspector would have his
eye on me. But I saw something here a week ago what wants a lot of
explaining away.”

“Now that’s interesting!” said the caretaker. “Get a chair and let’s
sit outside. I’d like to know what you saw.”

Both men took valuable old spindle-legged chairs from beneath the
staircase and placed them in the portico, in the darkening night.

Distant lights twinkled across the wide, level swards of Bushey Park,
while at the barracks a bugle sounded, and somewhere from afar up the
winding Thames came the shrill whistle of a tug towing barges to the
upper reaches.

Askew, an ex-sergeant of Fusiliers in the Great War, pulled out a
“gasper” and lit it, though not supposed to smoke on duty, while
Farmer filled his heavy briar, applied a match deliberately, and said:

“Now, tell me. What did you see here?”

“Something funny--can’t account for it any way.”

“Before that article appeared in the _Richmond and Twickenham
Times_--or after?”

“A week before,” Askew replied. “I of course saw what they said in the
paper about the happenings in this house thirty years ago.”

“And what did you actually see? Personally I don’t believe in anything
supernatural.”

“Well, I don’t hardly know how to describe it,” said the constable,
taking a long draw at his cigarette and holding his helmet on his
knee. “It was last Monday week, at about a quarter-past two in the
morning. The weather was rainy, and I was coming up the road to the
Green when I saw something in the window just here on the left of the
hall”--and he pointed to it. “It’s the window where the shutter had
fallen half away. I saw an indistinct green light. For the moment I
thought I was dreaming, for no light had ever been seen in the house
before. I stood and watched. The light got greener, and then slowly it
faded away. Once I thought that it was flames and that the place was
on fire. That’s all, Dickie. Now how do you account for that, eh?”

“Did you examine the premises?” asked Farmer, recollecting the strict
official orders in the case of anything mysterious seen at night.

“I did most certainly. The first thing I did was to see that the lock
on the gate had not been tampered with. Then, ten minutes after the
light had faded, I climbed the wall and made a thorough examination of
the premises in order to be able to give evidence if any burglars had
been at work. But I found absolutely nothing. I’ve been over the wall
here dozens of times, especially when those fire-raisers of country
houses were about. I had special orders to keep this place under
observation when I was on night duty. All I’ve ever seen, however, was
that funny dull green light. The dirty old holland blind was down, so
I could not see anybody inside. That’s where the mystery of it all
comes in. I’ve told my wife, and she tells me to say nothing to
nobody.”

“Are you quite sure that nobody was in the house--no thief?” asked
Farmer, puzzled, for Askew was so insistent.

“As certain as I sit here. I examined all the doors and windows, as
we’ve been ordered to do, as you know. Nothing had been disturbed.”
Then, after a pause, he added, “I don’t like the place, and I can
quite imagine that people die mysteriously here. Why has it been
opened after thirty years?”

“Perhaps it is to release the evil spirits, of which your green light
is one,” Farmer laughed.

Police Constable Askew, a tall, athletic Cornishman, drew himself up
in his chair, and asked:

“Do you think I’m a liar? Do you doubt what I tell you--that I saw the
green light with my own eyes?”

“No, I don’t,” replied the caretaker. “But, while some people see
things, it seems that others see nothing. They aren’t gifted with
second sight as they calls it. How long did this light last?”

“Oh, only about a second or two. If it hadn’t been for that dirty old
blind I could have seen right into the hall here. I tell you, Dickie,
I’ve seen something that can’t be explained, and I fully agree with
that article in the _Richmond Times_ that this here house on the Green
brings sudden death on to people. Mind you yourself don’t have heart
disease,” he added warningly.

“Phew! No fear of that, old man,” Farmer laughed. “After all my years
on the streets in the ‘T’ I’m not addicted to either fright or heart
trouble in any way. I was married twenty-one years ago, when I joined
at Bow Street. But,” he added, “don’t you think it was just a little
bit of imagination on your part--that green light? Just think!”

“No. I’ve seen it three times now.”

“Tell me exactly what it’s like,” asked Farmer, most interested.

“Well, I can only describe it as a dull, pale-green glow--and then it
quickly fades away. If it was at sunset I could quite imagine that it
was a light reflected through a window upon some bright, polished
surface, but there isn’t any sun at two o’clock in the morning.
Further, the place being locked and barred as it has been all these
years, there can have been nobody inside. If there had been, then Mr.
Gray and his people would have noticed traces of anybody being
unlawfully on the premises.”

“Quite true. They found the place just as it had been left thirty
years ago. Perry, our chief clerk, told me. It seems that the heavy
dust and close atmosphere upset Mr. Gray, so he went home early, a bit
off color.”

“Yes. The air is pretty thick inside, I should fancy.”

“It is. To-morrow I’m going to clear up one of the rooms and bring my
old camp-bed and some cooking things,” said Farmer. “There’s going to
be an auction, and I feel sure the things’ll fetch good prices unless
there’s a big ‘knock-out.’”

“Knock-outs aren’t fair. They ought to be stopped,” declared the tall
man in uniform. “But I tell you, Farmer, I’d rather that you took care
of these blooming premises than me. I’ll have to go on now, for I’ve
got to meet my sergeant at the Palace Gates, and I have only just
time,” he added, glancing at his wristlet watch.

“I’m not going to bed yet. Come back here and have a few whiffs when
you’ve gone round.”

“Righto!” replied the tall constable, and, hitching up his belt, he
descended the moss-grown, slippery steps, tramping heavily away in the
direction of the gates of the old-world Palace of Wolsey, the point
where he had to report to his sergeant.

The autumn night was still and warm. After Askew had gone, Farmer sat
back lazily in his chair smoking his pipe and reflecting that for the
first time in thirty years that heavy old front door had been opened.
Now and then as he sat alone, whiffs of close, mouldy air came from
within, air that filtered through those blankets of heavy dust-laden
cobwebs which festooned the ceilings, the work of the busy spiders
through three decades. Ever and anon strange noises, and creaks of
highly seasoned wood, came from the dark interior. Weird they were in
the dead silence, yet Farmer, used to “noises” in unoccupied houses,
smoked on, quite unperturbed.

The old turret clock in Hampton Court Palace chimed the hour--two
o’clock--and the paraffin lamp which the caretaker had set in the hall
was growing dim because he had not replenished it before he began his
vigil. Had there been sleeping accommodation Farmer would have gone to
bed, but as there was none he sat quite unruffled in the old
spindle-legged chair in the wide portico and dozed.

Presently he fell asleep. How long he was unconscious he did not know,
but he was at last awakened by Askew crying:

“Are you asleep, Farmer? Did you see it?”

“See what?” asked the other, springing startled to his feet, with
heavy eyes.

“Why! the light!”

“The light? What the deuce do you mean, sonny?”

“That funny light! It was showing in the window only a few seconds ago
as I came across the Green!” cried the man excitedly.

“Now look here, Askew!” exclaimed Farmer. “You’ve gone dotty!”

“I swear that I saw it just for one second,” declared the constable.
“You were asleep?”

“I suppose I must ha’ been,” admitted the stout caretaker. “But I
don’t believe in ghosts and green lights at night.”

“Well, I don’t care what you or anybody says, that’s the fourth time
I’ve seen that mysterious green glow. What the devil it is I don’t
know--only I’ve seen it!”

“I wish I’d seen it also,” laughed Farmer, still unconvinced.

Constable Askew shone his lantern into the dark hall, but all remained
undisturbed.

“Shall we have a look around?” he asked. “It won’t do us any harm.”

So the two men entered the dusty, neglected place, Askew shining his
electric lantern into every dark corner, but finding nothing.

“It’s got on your nerves,” declared Farmer, when they were again
standing together in the portico. “I’d ask for a change of beat, if I
were you.”

“Then you really don’t believe what I’ve told you, eh?” asked the
constable.

“I only believe what I see, my dear sonny,” was the caretaker’s quiet
reply.

“You’ll see it one day, mark me! I haven’t told anybody, because I
know I won’t be believed,” said the police officer excitedly.

“I sincerely hope I shall,” laughed Farmer, relighting his pipe and
reseating himself in his chair. “But you take my advice, P.C. Askew,
and get on another beat where you can’t give your imagination quite so
much play.”

“I tell you it isn’t imagination,” declared the other vehemently.
“Surely I can believe my own eyes!”

“You may be able to, but I’m older than you, and I find I sometimes
can’t. In any case, my dear boy, I don’t believe in your green light
till I myself sees it,” Farmer said frankly. “You’re surely old enough
in the Force to know how many haunted houses there are about. Why,
I’ve known dozens of ’em, but there’s never been any truth in any of
the stories.”

“There is in this one. You saw what they said in the paper about it.”

“I did, of course. But they were only coincidences. Besides, they said
nothing about this curious glow you’ve seen.”

“Because they know nothing about it,” he replied, taking a draw at the
“gasper” he had lit.

“I’d write to the papers about it if I were you,” remarked Farmer
sarcastically.

“And be put down as a blooming fool. Not quite!” was the constable’s
reply.

“Then next time you see the green glow in the window just come
straight in and have a good liker around to make sure your eyes
haven’t deceived you,” urged the stout ex-policeman. “One thing, I’ll
bet you, sonny, that in this place you’ll see nothing uglier than
Police Officer Askew himself.” And he laughed.

“I don’t care what you think, but I’ve seen a mysterious light in this
here locked-up house! And one day you’ll see it too. Mark me! Good
morning, Farmer.”

And in the first grey dawn Askew turned and strode leisurely away from
the Green, continuing his beat in the direction of Hampton Wick.




 CHAPTER IV.
 THE SIGN OF EVIL

At eleven o’clock on the following morning Brinsley Otway, having
arranged with a fellow-doctor named Tarrant, living in the Finchley
Road at Golder’s Green, to look after his practice for the day, met
Sibell at Paddington, crossed to Waterloo by tube, and took train to
Hampton Court, where they lunched at the old-world “Mitre” and
afterwards went on to the Guest House.

“Ugh! What a place!” exclaimed the fair-haired, well-dressed girl as
she entered the front door, which was open to admit sunshine and air.
“How dreadfully mouldy it smells, and look at all the cobwebs!”

“Only what one must expect after being closed so long,” remarked the
dark-faced young doctor beside her.

Farmer, the caretaker, and two of the auctioneer’s men in green baize
aprons were in the dining-room, raising a terrible dust in their
futile endeavor to clean up the place, so that they might catalogue
its contents prior to the sale, and allow a few days’ private view.

As Sibell stood in the doorway of the great old room, she could
scarcely see across it for clouds of dust. Through the open windows
came the pale autumn sunlight, which showed up the general shabbiness
and decay of the place, the damp-rotted carpet and hangings, the
moth-eaten tapestry, and the heavy Tudor furniture.

“I could never live in this dreadful place, Brin,” she declared, using
the pet name she had bestowed upon him. “Isn’t it horribly dull and
depressing?”

“It is. But it is very interesting to be in an atmosphere of centuries
ago,” her lover said. “The world has progressed, while this house has
remained just the same. Successive owners have never altered it. It
has been their creed. Apparently they held, for centuries, the same
idea of keeping it just as its original owner had it. The place
reminds me of the old house of Plantin, the Flemish patrician and
printer in Antwerp, who started to print in 1576, and his business has
been carried on uninterrupted till to-day. His house and furniture
have never been altered. It is the same here in the Guest House, which
should be preserved as a museum!”

“If I am compelled to live in it I want everything quite modern,”
declared the girl. “I will have everything cleared out and sold.”

“Won’t you keep anything?” asked the young doctor. “I would certainly
retain something of your ancestors--if I were you, dearest.”

“Perhaps I will when I’ve seen everything. But isn’t the place in a
terrible state?”

It certainly was.

No word had reached either of them regarding the mysterious attack
from which Mr. Gray had suffered on the previous day, or the fact that
he was still confined to his bed with his doctor in attendance. Mr.
Gray had ordered his staff to keep the mysterious affair a complete
secret, being afraid to frighten the young lady into whose possession
the Guest House had so suddenly passed. As a man of business he
hesitated to be any party to the sensational tradition of sinister
happenings in the place. His firm had had the house under its charge
for half a century, and he naturally felt that he should not encourage
any undue interest that might be derogatory to the value of the
estate.

Only that morning he had again telephoned from his bedside ordering
that not a word should leak out to Miss Dare.

From room to room Sibell and her lover wandered, examining the dusty,
neglected home of the D’Aires, finding each room filled with furniture
and objects of art which any museum would be proud to possess.

Upon the panelled walls of several rooms hung time-mellowed family
portraits by great painters of the past, including one of a pretty
little daughter of the ancient French house, Gabrielle D’Aire. Sibell
admired it, and said she would retain it. Not till afterwards did she
learn that it was one of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s hitherto unknown
pictures, nor that the larger one which hung beside it was a
Rembrandt. Indeed it was not until a fortnight after, when the art
dealers were allowed to inspect the house, that the treasures were
identified.

Through the dismal, dust-laden house the lovers wandered from room to
room. Everywhere the autumn sunlight fell across the faded carpets
through those old leaded windows of green glass, many panes of which
were broken. Over everything lay the decay of thirty years--the
brilliant, prosperous days of Victoria the Good, the height of
Britain’s world-power.

Together they entered a small room at the rear, the windows of which
overlooked the tangled garden, where the golden leaves of autumn were
fluttering down from the high elms which overshadowed the house. The
little room was lined from floor to ceiling with heavy books, the
leather bindings of which smelt close and stuffy--the
eighteenth-century room of a studious man, which had probably been
neglected ever since the accession of George the Third. The
writing-table was a little narrow one like a bedside table, and the
chairs were all Carolean, cane-seated and cane-backed.

“This seems to be one of the cosiest rooms,” Sibell remarked. “It
shall be your own little den, Brin. You can fit it up as a laboratory,
so that you can study all your germs, or ‘bugs,’ as you call them.”

Her lover, who had his hand already clasped in hers, for they were
alone, kissed her upon the lips, and replied:

“My darling, any room will do for my research work. It is best
upstairs in the attics, so as to be out of the way.”

“But, my dear Brin, I insist that you have a nice room, dearest,” she
said, looking up into his face with eyes full of the lovelight. “This
room will be quite handy for everything.”

She gazed into his face with wondering eyes--those big eyes which
always held him beneath her spell, so that he could never look upon
another woman with any other feeling than as a doctor would towards
his female patients.

“Only if we marry, Sibell.”

“Marry? Of course we shall!” she cried. “I am yours, if you will only
accept me! Did we not decide that long ago?”

“You were poor then. Now you are rich, my darling. A penniless doctor
like myself is but a poor husband for you.”

“My darling Brin. How very foolish you are! What are you talking
about?”

“Only that I think Gretton would make a far better husband for you.
Your guardian doesn’t care for me--neither does Lady Wyndcliffe. I
feel it always. I am only a mere hard-working suburban doctor, with
nothing except the fees I earn in the poor but respectable
neighborhood of the Finchley Road, and without even a single public
appointment. Each one I seek is always given to somebody else. And yet
in bacteriology and toxicology I earned honors at my examinations.”

“Don’t worry, my dear old Brin. I am yours--and you know it. I want no
other man and will have no other,” declared the girl sweetly, as she
drew his head towards her.

He hugged her to his breast and kissed her fondly upon the lips, for
they were alone in that dingy room, nobody being near. Her words gave
him the greatest comfort and encouragement any man could receive, for
he realized that he loved her with that great, all-absorbing affection
which, alas! comes to few men, love, alas! being so often a mere
passionate pretence in order to secure sympathy, companionship, or,
more often, fortune. As it has ever been through all the ages, so it
is to-day, every woman of every country is open to the flattery of a
man who seeks her, not from any love of her, but for his own
self-advancement in finance, in the higher social scale, or the puny
one of suburban or provincial bridge-parties.

The onlooker who travels the world over, and whose heart is hidebound,
sees so much that is amusing, on board liners, on expensive tours, and
in hotels-de-luxe from end to end of Europe or America, that he begins
to wonder if there really exists any real love commencing with the
capital L.

This is the note of this present romance of the writer’s
observation--the love between the poor but pretty, neat-ankled girl
who suddenly inherited a fortune, and with it a house of evil repute
as residence, and a hard-working suburban London doctor, whose modern
knowledge was equal to many great specialists in Harley Street,
and--though he did not know it--his name had already been placed upon
the list of Home Office experts to be called upon to analyse and fix
the culprit in the next case of any fresh mystery of crime submitted
by Scotland Yard.

As an ordinary hard-working practitioner in Golder’s Green he had
given evidence at the Old Bailey, six months before, in a most
complicated case which concerned the introduction of germs of a fatal
disease into the whiskey-and-soda nightcap of a man who had motored a
friend and his wife home from the Palace Theatre. Otway had, with
unerring knowledge, fixed the guilt upon both the accused, who were
convicted for attempted murder, Scotland Yard having afterwards sent
him their thanks.

Through that trial Otway had been marked out for advancement on the
lines followed by Pepper, Willcox, and the select list of Home Office
pathologists whose word is law to a jury in any criminal court.

Though the pair were unaware of it, the room in which they stood had
been the study of the great lawyer Sir Geoffrey Dare, who was famous
in the early days of King George III, and whose name has been handed
down in legal history as the prosecutor in the famous case of the
Durrants, husband and wife, whom he proved to have poisoned a family
of six persons in order to secure their inheritance. In that room many
conferences had been held with witnesses in the famous trial, which
resulted in both prisoners being hanged at Tyburn. Sir Geoffrey, who
was the most famous criminal lawyer of his time, was brother of John
Dare, the traveller who first explored the Areg region of the Sahara.

Otway took from one of the shelves a heavy, parchment-bound tome, and
found it to be an old treatise on Roman law, while next to it was an
early folio edition of Shakespeare. As a lover of books, sight of them
appealed to him, and he said:

“Before these are sold I would love to go through them. This
Shakespeare, though not the first folio, is evidently of considerable
value.”

“You’ll be choked with dust, darling,” she replied. “Wait until they
clean down the place. Isn’t it awful? Look at the cobwebs.”

They took a final glance around the dingy little room, where the light
struggled in through the dirt-encrusted windows, which could not be
opened because their frames had rotted. Hence the place smelt close
and musty.

“When cleaned and redecorated it will be most charming,” her lover
reassured her. “I can’t think what has given rise to the belief that
this is a house of evil. It certainly has been neglected, and, as in
many other houses all over the country, people have died suddenly
here, but the evil is, I feel certain, only imaginary--the result of
some ill-natured local gossip that has grown into tradition.”

Had he known of the sudden and unaccountable manner in which Mr. Gray
had been attacked he would certainly not have expressed such an
opinion. But happily for the lovers, the occurrence was being kept a
profound secret.

They ascended the broad oak staircase, on which the thick-pile carpet
still remained, though it was in holes in many places, showing the
wood beneath. In the great drawing-room the lovers found much to
interest them as they made a tour of inspection of the spacious
apartment. At once they saw that the furniture, though sadly out of
repair, was genuinely antique, and that the pictures were of
considerable value. Near the centre of the room stood the ancient
armchair upholstered in faded crimson velvet to which Mr. Gray had
staggered when he had been so mysteriously seized with illness, and
the young doctor, knowing nothing of the occurrence, remarked upon the
handsome Renaissance carving of its short, bulbous legs.

Together the pair stood at the dingy, weather-stained old windows
gazing down upon the big, neglected garden, where the weeds grew
breast high and the leaves were floating down from the ancient trees.
By its successive owners that room had been kept practically the same
as it was in Henry the Eighth’s time, except that the carpets and some
of the furniture had been renewed by the father of the last owner on
his marriage; an apartment full of objects of art, the atmosphere of
which was that of the days of the Great Cardinal and possibly one of
the most carefully preserved rooms in the whole Kingdom.

From room to room they passed, ascending to the bedrooms and servants’
quarters just as Mr. Gray and his assistants had done. They saw the
ancient four-poster bedsteads, with their hangings of faded and
time-stained chintz, the genuine Chippendale washstands and mirrors,
the old fire-screens of needlework, and cushions worked in colored
wools by hands that had crumbled to dust two centuries ago.

Wherever they went they raised dust, causing Sibell to sneeze
violently, and by each thing they touched their hands became
blackened, the girl remarking that her gloves were already ruined.

After nearly a couple of hours they descended, and, having chatted
with the fat caretaker Farmer--who made no mention of Askew’s
experience on the previous night, as he treated it as mere
imagination--they left and returned to London, where, after dining
together at the Trocadero, Otway saw his sweetheart off to Cookham
from Paddington.

Next day the young doctor, having arranged with his friend Tarrant to
look after his practice, set out early for the Guest House and spent
the whole of the day in the great lawyer’s close-smelling library
going through his books. Already an expert from a well-known West End
dealer in rare books was there at the invitation of the auctioneers, a
snuffy, white-bearded old gentleman named Ebenezer Tewe, and together
they dusted and examined the title-pages and condition of volume after
volume.

Some of them Mr. Tewe set aside as valuable, and others which took
Otway’s fancy he, in turn, put away from the others. One treasure
Otway found, which Mr. Tewe agreed was extremely valuable, was a
vellum-bound volume of copies of the secret archives of Venice under
the Doges concerning unknown poisons, how they were concocted, how
they were used to remove the enemies of the ancient Republic of
Venice, and the fees paid by the Republic to the secret assassins.

As a research worker in the field of toxicology, Brinsley Otway seized
upon it, while Mr. Tewe agreed that it was one of the most unique and
valuable of all the volumes in the library.

“There are only three copies extant,” said the snuffy old bibliophile.
“One is in the Bodleian, the other in the French National Library, and
the third is in private hands in America. It was sold at Sotheby’s for
£6,300, and unfortunately went across the Atlantic. The compilation
of it must have meant a lifetime of delving into the faded parchments
in the archives of Venice.”

“The old Italian language will puzzle me, but the Latin part is quite
easy,” Otway said, highly delighted with his fortunate find.

Throughout the day the two men worked together in the close little
room, regardless of the half-inch of dust everywhere. Mr. Tewe
identified several rare early printed books from the Nüremberg and
Venetian presses, while with them was a file of _Punch_, from its
earliest number down to 1883, together with the first six years of the
issue of _The Times_, bound in calf, in a dozen volumes.

But the majority of the books were out-of-date law treatises,
practically worthless to-day, though among them was a manuscript book
upon English heraldry, with illuminated coats-of-arms, written in the
crabbed and faded hand of Sir William Segar, Garter King of Arms in
the reign of James the First.

Without thought of lunch, so absorbed were they, they continued their
investigations until the light faded, and then Otway, having packed up
the precious volume of Venetian archives, together with two or three
other books, ascended the broad staircase to speak with the
auctioneer’s representative, who was in the upper drawing-room.

Afterwards he left and hurried back across London to the small,
red-brick, corner house of jerry-built type in the Finchley Road where
he carried on his practice.

Old Mrs. Mobbs, his housekeeper, handed him several telephone messages
from patients which she had given over to Dr. Tarrant, who lived
farther up the road and who was going on a fortnight’s holiday, during
which time Otway had promised to look after his practice.

In the cosy little bachelor sitting-room his modest dinner was laid, a
single cover, for he usually ate a chop at nine o’clock, when the last
of his suburban patients had left the surgery.

He was in the act of eating a peach, which he had taken from a plate
on the sideboard, after untying the parcel of books which he had
brought from the Guest House, when he was suddenly seized by an
unusual faintness.

For a few seconds he stood rigid. The peach fell from his nerveless
fingers. Then, crossing to the mahogany sideboard, he poured out
unsteadily some brandy and swallowed it. It burned his throat. At the
same moment he was seized by a violent fit of shivering. Convulsions
shook his strong frame, while excruciating pains shot through his
extremities. He stood as one transfixed, when a sudden spasm shot
through his heart, and the glass fell from his fingers and was smashed
to fragments.

Instantly he realized that the symptoms were such as he had never
observed before. He held his breath and set his teeth. Then, with a
supreme effort, and his eyes starting from his head, he managed to
utter a sharp cry which brought his old housekeeper hurriedly into the
room.

“I--_I’m very ill_!” he gasped. “Fetch Dr. Tarrant! Quick! Tell him
that--that--I----”

But, alas! the sentence remained unfinished, for the poor fellow
reeled and fell senseless upon the carpet, yet another victim of that
mysterious evil influence which pervaded the long-closed house at
Hampton Court.




 CHAPTER V.
 SHADOWS

Called by telephone, Dr. Tarrant hurried along to his young
colleague Otway, whom he found stretched upon the carpet, a cushion
having been placed beneath his head by the faithful housekeeper, Mrs.
Mobbs. The portly old woman, in her neat black, was naturally greatly
agitated. The practitioner fell upon his knees and unloosened the
stricken man’s collar.

“I heard him cry out, and rushed in to find him suddenly attacked. He
could hardly speak,” the woman explained. “He managed to tell me to
ring you up, and then he fell on the floor.”

The doctor was busy unbuttoning the young man’s clothes and feeling
his pulse and the region of the heart. He could discover no pulsation,
and, as far as he could judge, Brinsley Otway appeared to be already
dead. There was no sign of any flicker of life. The heart, indeed, had
ceased to beat!

He straightened himself and held his breath. Even to him, a medical
man of long practice, the affair came as a complete shock.

“But what can have happened?” he asked breathlessly. “Tell me exactly
what happened--every detail,” he urged.

“I don’t know, doctor,” replied the bewildered woman. “He’s been away
all day down at Hampton Court, as you know. He gets back just before
half-past seven, when I had his dinner ready. He says to me, ‘I won’t
have it for ten minutes,’ and comes in here. I saw him untying that
parcel of books on the sideboard just as I passed to go to the
kitchen, and then I suddenly heard him cry out. I dashed in just in
time to see him collapse.”

“Did he drink anything?” asked the doctor, rising and going to the
sideboard, where the package of old books lay open.

The broken glass on the floor aroused his suspicions.

“Did he go into the dispensary?” asked Tarrant, suddenly recollecting
that he might have gone there on his return, fagged and tired, and
mixed himself a cocktail from the many bottles there, for he dispensed
his own mixtures.

“No, doctor. He didn’t go along the passage at all,” declared the
woman. “I know he never passed the kitchen door.”

“Nor did he go upstairs, eh? He simply came straight into this room.”

“Yes, doctor. He came straight in here after he hung his hat in the
hall.”

Dr. Tarrant crossed to the telephone and rang up Dr. Randall, another
of his colleagues, an old practitioner who lived close by in a new
street off the Finchley Road.

Then again he fell upon his knees beside the inert form of Brinsley
Otway. The patient lay there with half-closed eyes, his face white as
marble and his hands cold and stiffening.

Again and again the doctor sought for signs of life, but failed to
discover any. Respiration had ceased, and with it the pulsations of
the heart. The attack was most mystifying, for he had never before
come across such inexplicable symptoms.

Randall was an old-fashioned, white-headed doctor of the highly
pedantic type, who, rather rusty and out of date in his medical
methods, concealed his ignorance, like so many others, by constantly
referring to his Cambridge days and making the most of his knowledge
of the classics. Patients of unimportance he did not take the trouble
to impress, simply doling out innocuous pills and draughts, and
trusting that the poor people would not worry him further. But his
better-class patients he always took great pains to impress by his
’Varsity speech and manner.

As a matter of fact, he was utterly unable to diagnose such a case,
leaving Tarrant, who was nearly twenty years younger and much more up
to date, to solve the mystery.

Dr. Randall’s car, as it happened, was standing at his door;
therefore, on receiving the call, he at once sprang in, and in five
minutes was round at Otway’s.

When he saw the prostrate man he became instantly grave, and, after
hearing briefly from Tarrant what had occurred, his clean-shaven,
white-fringed face assumed a very grave expression. In contrast to
Tarrant--who was an alert, dark-haired man of forty, and enjoyed a
very wide and lucrative practice in the district--old Randall went
about with an assumed air of superiority which caused him to be very
much disliked, hence his practice had greatly fallen off.

“Heart disease,” Tarrant exclaimed after a long examination.
“Angina--without a doubt!”

“That’s exactly my opinion,” said Randall, though he really held no
opinion, being ready to agree with anything his friend might suggest.

“He probably walked home from the station too quickly,” Tarrant said.
“He complained to me about a month ago of sharp pain in the chest,
which he put down to acute indigestion. On feeling ill he apparently
took some brandy,” he added, smelling the broken glass.

Together they lifted the inanimate form of their young colleague upon
the old leather-covered couch, and placed his head upon a pillow.

At that moment Dr. Tarrant noticed a half-eaten peach lying upon the
floor beneath the little table in the window.

“Why, he’s been eating!” he exclaimed, picking it up and examining it
curiously. “I wonder if this has anything to do with the attack?”

“Oh, doctor, he’s eaten one of them there peaches!” exclaimed the old
housekeeper. “I meant to tell him about them when he came in, but it
went right out of my head. They were brought by a young woman who said
she came from a firm in the West End, and, as they were addressed to
my master and marked ‘perishable,’ I opened them and put them on a
plate. There was no name of who sent them. Perhaps he ordered them. He
orders things himself sometimes, and they are delivered.”

The two doctors exchanged puzzled glances.

“We had better have this analysed,” Tarrant said, holding in his hand
the half-consumed fruit, which still retained the stone, and regarding
it with a puzzled expression.

He placed it upon one of the clean plates upon the dining-table and
put it aside, together with the other four ripe peaches.

“He may be poisoned!” suggested Randall. “But if so, it acted
uncommonly quick.”

“When I saw him, only a minute before, he had just untied the string
of the parcel, so he must have been taken ill almost instantly after
biting the fruit.”

“Exactly. He did not have time to eat it all,” remarked Tarrant. “That
is, perhaps, as well, for it may furnish us with the truth concerning
the mystery.”

Turning again, he glanced at the white-faced figure lying so prostrate
and still, and drew a deep sigh. He liked Brinsley Otway. Indeed,
everyone liked the smart, up-to-date young fellow who was such a good
friend to his charity patients, and so often attended the poor without
taking a fee. There were times, too, when in a poverty-stricken home
his hand went into his pocket and pulled out half a crown as “a
present for the children.” And the starving mother knew not that that
coin he gave often deprived him of his box of his favorite brand of
Egyptian cigarettes.

“Don’t you think, doctor, that we ought to let Miss Dare know?”
suggested the stout old woman, who had been gazing upon her young
master’s marble face. “Poor girl, I’m afraid the shock will kill her!
She’s such a sweet little thing, and they’re so devoted to each other.
It’s a sin that the awful truth should be told her. But it must be.”

“Yes, my good woman,” said Dr. Randall in his best ’Varsity manner.
“But it must be. Alas! that our love idylls never last. It is the same
everywhere--the broken column of happiness and the realization that
all earthly bliss is only a pipe-dream.”

“Well, call Miss Dare,” Tarrant said. “I know her quite well. She
helped us at the piano in a concert for the blind held at Hampstead a
few months ago.”

Mrs. Mobbs gave him the telephone number, and he at once telephoned to
Cookham. Briefly he explained who he was, and told her that Otway had
been taken rather queer, and suggested that she should come up to
London at once to see him.

He heard her voice in reply, asking in anxiety what was the matter
with him. But Dr. Tarrant answered in a calm, even voice:

“He’s had a rather nasty heart-attack through hurrying from the
station, and he is asking for you.”

“I’ll come at once,” she replied breathlessly, and, after some further
inquiries, rang off.

It was past ten o’clock when Sibell, hurrying, her big blue eyes
anxious, alighted from a taxi in the Finchley Road. Entering her
lover’s room, she found him lying upon the frayed old couch, the two
doctors kneeling by his side, while standing near, watching the
prostrate man, was the faithful old housekeeper.

As she entered, Dr. Tarrant, recognising her, rose to his feet and
greeted her in a whisper.

“I’m awfully sorry to have disturbed you, Miss Dare,” he said, “but I
thought it my duty to do so.”

“Is he alive?” gasped the white-faced girl, bending to the rigid face
of the man she loved. His collar and tie had been removed, and he lay
there fully dressed, his eyes closed as one dead.

“He is still breathing,” replied the elder of the two doctors. “His
seizure is most unaccountable. He was in the act of eating a peach, it
seems, when he suddenly collapsed.”

“There was nothing wrong with the fruit, I hope,” cried the distressed
girl. “I bought them in Regent Street this afternoon, and sent them to
him.”

“Ah! I’m glad we know that!” remarked Dr. Randall. “We were told by
Mrs. Mobbs that a strange woman had left them.”

“I forgot to put in my card,” Sibell said. “But will he recover?” she
asked breathlessly.

“We are doing our best for him,” answered Tarrant, whom she had met
once before. “His heart is unfortunately very weak.”

“But what can be the cause?”

“The symptoms are those of sudden failure of the heart,” was the
reply.

“Then his illness has nothing to do with the fruit?” she asked
eagerly.

“Probably not. I will send the rest of the peach he was in the act of
eating, with the others in the basket and the broken glass, to Sir
George Orelebar to be analysed as soon as I can. Then we shall know
the truth. Of course he may be poisoned, but I do not anticipate it.”

Sibell breathed more freely, and for a long time stood staring at the
unconscious man, whose countenance was white as marble. The doctors,
with their stethoscopes, knelt and listened constantly to his
breathing. She watched their faces. Once that of Dr. Randall assumed a
graver expression.

“No! Don’t!” she shrieked, laying her trembling fingers upon his arm.
“No. For God’s sake--don’t tell me he’s dying!”

The white-haired old doctor shook his head gravely, and replied:

“A flicker of the fire of life is still discernible, but whether he
will pull through we cannot yet tell. It is a serious attack--very
serious indeed.”

At that moment Dr. Tarrant’s big-built Irish chauffeur burst into the
room and handed his master a tiny phial with a glass stopper for
measuring drops. Instantly Randall poured out some water into a small
glass, to which he very carefully added ten drops of the drug.
Afterwards he held it to the light, examining it critically, and,
while Tarrant held up Otway’s head, the other forced the draught
between his teeth; and, the helpless girl stood watching.

The whole tragic affair was most puzzling. The girl had flung off her
coat and hat, and, in a sleeveless gown of black georgette trimmed
with silver, which made her neck and arms look like alabaster, she
again sank upon her knees, and, as they laid his head back upon the
pillow, she bent forward and kissed his cold, hard face in front of
them all.

The room was warm even to stuffiness, so the window was opened, and
through it came the chimes of the church in the Finchley Road as the
clock struck the hour.

Would he live? The scene was pathetic. Of all the crowd of medical
students at Guy’s, Brinsley Otway had been one of the most popular. He
was certainly the leading light of the Medical School, and in
preparation of charity “rags” he was always full of new ideas for
“stunts.”

“I fear it is a case of mitral incompetence of the heart,” remarked
Dr. Tarrant in a low voice to his companion. “The symptoms are very
evident; there is the feeble pulse, œdema of the lower extremities,
and anasarca.”

“Where there is mitral incompetence there is usually some pulmonary
congestion,” remarked the other. “That condition appears to be
absent.”

Sibell heard, but did not understand their argument.

“Is it very critical?” she asked.

“Very,” replied Tarrant. “We had better place him on his bed.”

Quickly the bed upstairs was arranged by Sibell, and the two men,
assisted by Mrs. Mobbs, carried him in, when Sibell left while they
undressed him.

The poor girl was beside herself with grief. With blanched face and
clenched hands, she paced the narrow passage feverishly. She blamed
herself for sending him that fatal peach. Would he be spared to her?
If he died, then her future life would be a blank, for she could never
love again. Brinsley was her ideal; she worshipped him as a god.

She remained there during the night, but there was no improvement in
her stricken lover’s condition. The two doctors remained with him till
two o’clock, when Tarrant left, carrying with him the remainder of the
peach, and the fruit which had not been eaten.

Hour after hour, with her lover’s coat wrapped about her bare
shoulders, the girl sat near the patient’s bed, while Mrs. Mobbs made
tea for Randall and herself. Time after time the girl tenderly
smoothed the unconscious man’s pillow, and ever and anon kissed his
cold, white brow.

“Is mitral incompetence of the heart very serious?” she asked Tarrant
when he returned to relieve his colleague.

“Very serious indeed, Miss Dare,” replied the collapsed man’s friend.
“Few people recover, but we hope that Brinsley, being in such good
health, will get through it.”

“What is the use of being pessimistic, sir?” remarked Mrs. Mobbs. “We
can’t afford to lose the young master, and, moreover, we’re not going
to do so,” she added vehemently.

“The crisis is from twelve to fifteen hours after the attack. That
will be before mid-day,” he said.

The girl, with weary, deep-set eyes, waited till five o’clock, but, as
there was no sign of returning consciousness, though Tarrant declared
that he was still living, she went into an adjoining room and cast
herself upon the bed, where she dropped off to sleep, thoroughly
exhausted.

At three o’clock that afternoon Dr. Tarrant, having driven to
Kensington, stood in the laboratory of Professor Orelebar, the
well-known Government analyst, whose evidence was so often taken in
criminal cases.

“The peaches you brought this morning show no sign whatever of
contamination,” declared the shrunken little man in a black coat which
seemed several sizes too large for him. “I have submitted them to
every known test, but I have failed to establish any evidence which
could lead to the supposition of poisoning. We have worked all day
upon it, and Professor Grant entirely agrees with me. The glass
contained pure brandy.”

Dr. Tarrant thanked the famous adviser to the Home Office, and, as he
walked back to the High Street, Kensington station, he became fully
convinced that the young man’s condition was due to heart trouble.

Sibell lived through an interminable week of dread and uncertainty.

She went to stay with her aunt, Lady Wyndcliffe, in West Halkin
Street, but each day she went to Finchley Road, yet her lover still
lay unconscious, watched by a nurse and Mrs. Mobbs, Dr. Tarrant
visiting him thrice each day. The report, alas! was always the same.
The patient showed no sign either of improvement or returning
consciousness. He lay motionless and white in that small, darkened
room, hovering hour by hour between life and death.

Dr. Orlando Snow, a bald-headed Harley Street specialist, was brought
by Dr. Tarrant one afternoon, and, standing by the inanimate form
lying there so blanched and still, he heard from him exactly how he
had been discovered, while the housekeeper described the distress
which Sibell was suffering.

“She comes here every day and sits in tears. Poor girl, she’s
inconsolable! It must be a terrible blow for her,” said the
sympathetic Mrs. Mobbs.

“It must be,” replied the specialist. “I wonder what caused the
attack?”

“Heart--mitral incompetence; that’s my diagnosis,” said Tarrant.

Snow was silent for a few moments, his eyes fixed upon the immobile
countenance of the patient. Then he made his own examination, and
agreed entirely with the general practitioner.

“Serious?” asked Tarrant.

“Very. I don’t like his condition at all,” the grey-bearded specialist
answered gravely. “But he may just pull through”; and he gave several
directions to doctor and nurse.

“Poor Brinsley,” exclaimed Tarrant. “I do hope he’ll pull through.

“The whole affair is a complete mystery,” Tarrant remarked. Then,
lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, he added: “Œdema of the
lower extremities, anasarca, and all that.”

“Yes; were it not for Orelebar’s declaration that there was nothing
wrong with the peaches, I should suspect poisoning,” declared the
great specialist.

“But Mrs. Mobbs now admits that when the peaches were left she ate one
of them from the basket. She suffered no ill-effects. Therefore why
was Otway taken suddenly ill when eating one of them some hours
later?”

“He only ate half,” the specialist pointed out. “The other half and
the stone have been analysed by Orelebar and Grant, both great experts
in poisons, and have been declared to be quite sound and good, without
traces of any toxic substance. Yet I repeat that, if it were not for
the symptoms of heart-trouble, I should certainly suspect poison.”

None, not even Sibell herself, had any knowledge of the strange
experience which had befallen the auctioneer, Mr. Herbert Gray, while
inspecting the Guest House, or the serious illness that had followed.
Some evil influence was at work at the House on the Green. But what
was it?




 CHAPTER VI.
 MISTRESS AND MAN

More than a fortnight elapsed before Brinsley Otway had sufficiently
recovered to get up and sit by the window. Thin and pale, a mere
shadow of his former self, he had been very near death, yet, thanks in
a great measure to the attention of the nurse who had come from the
Middlesex Hospital to attend him, and the constant care of Dr. Tarrant
and Sibell, he had slowly struggled back to life.

Sibell’s joy knew no bounds when she heard that her lover was at last
out of danger. She visited him daily, brought him all sorts of
delicacies, and sat with him for hours while the nurse went out for
her daily relaxation.

Each afternoon they were alone, and often sat locked in each other’s
arms, he raining kisses upon her full red lips.

“You have been given back to me by God, my darling!” she one day
whispered to him, her slim, tender hand smoothing the dark hair from
his brow. “I constantly prayed that your life might be spared. And God
has answered my appeal.” And she gazed into his countenance with the
lovelight in her big blue eyes.

He drew down her head and kissed her upon the lips for the thousandth
time, unable to utter the thoughts which arose within him. Hand in
hand they sat together for fully five minutes without speaking. The
fire burned brightly, and the place was warm and cosy that chilly
autumn day, for outside it was dark and rainy, with the eternal
honking of the motor traffic below in the Finchley Road.

“I hope the doctors will be able to cure you, entirely,” the girl
said, with serious apprehension. “Does Dr. Tarrant think you might
have another sudden attack?”

“He thinks it improbable. My heart is quite normal, and it only
remains for me to gain weight. He says I’m to have a holiday. But
where can one go in England at this time of year?” he asked.

She reflected for a moment.

“Aunt Etta wants to take me to the Riviera in the second week in
November. Uncle Edward is going to New York. Why not come out with
us?” she suggested.

“A good idea! I’d be delighted, if I could arrange for a ‘locum.’ But
your aunt might not approve,” said the young man.

“I’ll suggest it to her to-night. I feel sure she’d love to have you.
They have a sweet villa at Cannes--a delightful place on the hill. Do
come!” she cried enthusiastically. “The sunshine and flowers and blue
sea will soon put you right again, dear. And, besides,” she added with
a delightful smile, “I don’t want to be parted from you for four whole
months. It would seem an eternity.”

“Don’t you, darling?” he laughed, stroking her fair shingled hair.
“Well, ascertain your aunt’s views.”

“I will. And, if she agrees, I’ll book you a berth on the Blue Train
we are travelling by. Ashe, and Bevan, my aunt’s maid, are going with
us. Ashe is invaluable. Aunt Etta never travels without him. Uncle
Edward has some business in New York for a company of which he is a
director. He is to join us for a few weeks before we come home at the
end of March.”

Old Mrs. Mobbs brought up their tea, which Sibell poured, and, after a
cosy meal by the fireside, they both smoked cigarettes until the nurse
returned to take up her duties. Then Sibell put on her smart fur coat,
and, with a silent kiss in secret, bade him farewell.

At West Halkin Street she found the Countess alone, reading in a
corner of the drawing-room, a handsomely-furnished apartment on the
first floor, and at once suggested that Brinsley might go to Cannes
with them.

Lady Wyndcliffe stirred in her chair, and, looking over her book,
replied:

“I’ll ask your uncle, and hear his opinion, dear. Do you mean that he
should be our guest--or go to an hotel?”

“Why, be our guest--if he could, auntie. If we are alone, we can go to
so few places. If Brinsley is with us, he can take us to dances and
all sorts of shows. It was, as you know, horribly dull last year till
we met Mr. Lavis.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s true I like the air on the Riviera. It always
agrees with me. But the people are such a horribly mixed lot. The
world and the half-world rub shoulders, and the former imitate the
latter, till one can scarcely discern the dividing-line,” her aunt
said with an air of utter boredom.

Lady Wyndcliffe had shown herself much better disposed towards her
niece since she heard the news of her great inheritance.

“Yes, auntie. But it’s often very amusing on the Riviera--if you have
a man to take you about. And Brinsley is such an excellent
dancer--which you admit.”

“He is. I like dancing with him,” her aunt declared. “Of course if I
can persuade your uncle to let him go with us, I certainly will.”

“Thank you, auntie dear,” cried the delighted girl. “I’ll go up and
take off my things.”

And she ran to her room full of eager anticipation of a merry time
with Brinsley amid the gaiety of the Azure Coast, with its palms and
olives, its blue seas and flower-scented zephyrs.

They dined alone _en famille_ at the polished oval table with shaded
candelabra, and an epergne of great chrysanthemums as a centre-piece.
In the dim light Ashe, the discreet, obsequious butler, a clean-shaven
man whose hair was edged with silver, moved silently in the shadows of
the luxuriously-furnished room, and served them with that soft voice
and deftness characteristic of the perfect family retainer.

Lady Wyndcliffe, who had been out at a charity matinée that
afternoon, gossiped about it during the meal.

Afterwards a friend of hers, a Mrs. Hall-Carew, who lived in Curzon
Street, called for Sibell and took her to the theatre, while later on,
Lord Wyndcliffe, a bald-headed, heavy-faced man, went out to play
bridge with some friends in Mount Street, leaving his wife alone.

The slim, handsome woman sat for a full quarter of an hour pondering,
her brows knit, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting upon her
hands, gazing at the carpet.

“I wonder if it would be quite safe?” she pondered.

Presently, as though in sudden decision, she rose and pressed the
bell.

The door opened a few minutes later and the exemplary Ashe entered,
closing the door quietly after him.

“Well?” he asked abruptly. “What’s the matter now?”

His manner was completely different from the polite, well-mannered
butler who had served dinner. He was self-possessed and arrogant, more
as though he were master of the house and the Countess a menial.

“I was just going out,” he said gruffly. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you, Albert,” said the woman in a low-cut
sleeveless black gown embroidered with silk flowers around the hem and
corsage. “Sit down.”

“What about?” he snapped. “Don’t let us carry on that discussion of
this morning. I’m fed up with the whole damned thing!”

“Not more so than myself,” replied the woman, in a tone which one does
not use towards servants. “Sit down, please, and hear calmly what I’ve
got to say, Albert.”

“I’ll go and get a drink and a cigar first. I can be more attentive
then”; and, laughing grimly, he descended the stairs to the
dining-room. On his return he was smoking one of her husband’s
choicest cigars, while in his hand he carried a glass of
whiskey-and-soda.

He turned the key in the door and threw himself carelessly into an
arm-chair. He said at last:

“Now, Etta, my dear, I’m all attention.”

The woman looked at him strangely. There was a curious aspect about
the dark head with its poise of proud aloofness, its subtle air of
distinction, and the unmoving, absorbed way it was turned to the
man-servant who sat before her.

What had caused that burning melancholy in her eyes? Was it due to the
subtle chiselling of her white, heavily-fringed lids? And the
sorrowful lifting of her brows? Could that, too, be merely caused by
exquisitely-sculptured contours? Or were they merely mute signals of a
soul in distress--a distress so deep that the woman had ceased to
struggle and had given herself up to terrible despair? What pitiless
fate could have made her look like that?

“I see that something’s a bit wrong,” said the butler. “You were not
like this at dinner. What’s the matter?”

“I’ve had bad news,” the pretty Countess said. “I wore my mask at
dinner--as I am always compelled to wear it. I’ve had bad news.”

“I guessed as much,” said Ashe, holding his cigar in his fingers.
“Well, let’s know the worst.”

“Rupert is coming to London!”

“Rupert!” gasped the man, starting to his feet. “By heaven! He mustn’t
come--he mustn’t ever find you!”

“He will probably have a difficulty, now that I’ve changed my name and
married Wyndcliffe.”

“It was a damned bad move on your part, Etta, ever to have married the
old ass. I told you so at the time.”

“I know--I know!” cried the unhappy woman. “But he has been so very
good to me, so what would he say if he knew the truth?”

“He will never know--provided you are discreet,” Ashe assured her, his
rather bloated face set hard, and his brows knit in thought. The
problem presented by his mistress’s announcement was certainly a very
difficult one, a _contretemps_ which would require the greatest tact
and ingenuity to avoid successfully. He contemplated the end of the
excellent cigar for a few moments.

“How do you know Rupert is coming?” he inquired suddenly.

“I had a letter from Eric Britton, in San Francisco, by this
afternoon’s post, giving me warning.”

“I don’t trust that stiff Britton,” the man snapped.

“He knows nothing of my present whereabouts. He sent the letter
addressed to Morgan’s Bank in Pall Mall, and they forwarded it on to
Burton’s Library, in Kensington--where I am known as Mrs. Higham.”

“If Rupert is in search of you, then mind he doesn’t trace letters
sent to Horgan’s Bank,” her companion said.

“I’ve already thought of that. I’ve written to the bank, asking them
to send all my letters to the Poste Restante at Melbourne, as I am
going on a pleasure trip to Australia. Instead of that, we are going
to the Riviera.”

“That’s all right,” said the manservant. “But it would be far better
to prevent Rupert from coming over to London at all. If he’s here,
then there is constant danger. Think of the big stake we might so
easily lose. Think of this present life, Etta--of the terrible
uncertainty of it all; of the daily fear you have of Wyndcliffe
discovering the truth. Reflect upon it all,” he urged, standing before
her. “There must be some way out of this. And the only way out I see
is to prevent him from coming over.”

“How can you do that, Albert?” asked the woman in despair. “How is it
possible?”

“It wants all thinking over,” he snapped, a hard, determined
expression on his countenance. “I must devise some plan. But we won’t
trust that fellow Britton, for, if the worst came to the worst, he’d
certainly smell a rat. And we surely don’t want that. No, you must
just fade out for a bit.”

“To the Riviera, I suppose,” she said. “Sibell wants me to invite
Otway. What do you think?”

The man, to whom his mistress was so familiar and confidential,
hesitated for a few moments.

“Well, in the circumstances he might perhaps be useful. But I do hope
they’re not too deeply in love with each other, otherwise it may cause
us a good deal of trouble. You know what I mean?” he added, regarding
her very strangely.

She swallowed the lump which arose in her throat, and in a low voice
exclaimed:

“I know at what you are hinting. Please do not refer to it, I beg of
you.”

“I won’t. I only point out that the less love existing between the
pair, the better for everybody concerned,” he said. “On the other
hand, I can see no reason why the young fellow should not go with you
both as companion, especially as I shall not be there.”

“You’re not coming with us?” asked Lady Wyndcliffe, aghast.

“No. I shall have other matters much more important to attend to,” he
replied in a mysterious manner. “I haven’t yet thought out this sudden
danger which threatens. When there’s danger, you know, Etta, I’m the
first to face it. It isn’t the first little alarm we’ve had by
several. So just leave it to me to find a way out. We can’t go on much
longer as we’ve been going. Happily for our success, Sibell knows
nothing, and suspects nothing. Neither does your ass of a husband. But
we are both out for money--big money--is not that so?”

“I agree,” his mistress said. “But I won’t go to Cannes without you.”

“I’ll get a good servant for you, never fear. I’ll see about it
to-morrow. There’s a man named Nivern just leaving Lord Cathlake’s.
He’s quite reliable, I happen to know.”

“Where shall you go?”

“I don’t know just yet. Rupert must be prevented from coming to
London, and it’s no use sitting here awaiting disaster, is it? If he
comes, then he must meet you or Sibell sooner or later. Therefore he
is best over in America. Let’s see--it’s quite five years or more
since that affair in New York.”

“Well, nobody knows about that except you,” said the woman grimly.

“No. You’ve led old Wyndcliffe up the garden very well indeed, Etta,”
laughed the man, drinking deeply of his whiskey-and-soda.

“Give me twenty pounds,” he said suddenly. “I’ve had a rough week.
Every horse I fancied went down.”

Without protest, the heavy-eyed woman rose, and, going to her room,
returned with two ten-pound notes, which she handed to him.

“Thanks,” he said, as he crushed them into his vest pocket. “I’ll want
three hundred or so to go on with when I leave. I’m just going out for
an hour or two.”

And, carefully throwing his cigar-end out of the window, he turned and
left.

Next morning, after breakfast, Lord Wyndcliffe and Sibell were sitting
in the morning-room, the girl idling over a picture-paper, when they
heard a violent altercation in the dining-room between her ladyship
and the butler, Ashe.

“I’ll hear no more!” Sibell heard her aunt shout. “I will not stand
your abominable insolence any longer! You are dismissed, and will
leave the house this morning. You can have a month’s wages in lieu of
notice, but I’ll not have you in my house another hour!”

And Lady Wyndcliffe dashed into the morning-room and burst out crying.

“Ashe has been most abominably insolent to me, dear!” she declared to
her husband through her tears. “I’ve sent him away.”

“Insolent to you!” cried the man, starting angrily to his feet.

“No, dear!” she urged, her hand upon his shoulder. “Please don’t
excite yourself. He’s gone to pack up. I’ll send his check into the
kitchen, and we are well rid of such a fellow.”

“I’ve never liked him,” declared the Earl.

“Neither have I,” Sibell agreed. “He’s always seemed so abominably
familiar, auntie.”

“Never mind, dear. He’s going. So we must look out for another man.
Mrs. Owen Clark gave me the name of a man the other day. I’ve got his
address somewhere.”

And so, an hour later, the faithful Mr. Albert Ashe, who had been
nearly two years in the employ of Lady Wyndcliffe, left West Halkin
Street with his luggage on a taxi-cab.

But before he went he managed to snatch a few whispered words with his
mistress in her boudoir.

“When you go to Cannes, be extremely careful to hide everything from
young Otway. Remember the great secret I told you the other day!”

The woman nodded, her face white to the lips.

“Well, if you hear of anything happening, keep your own counsel, and
put two and two together. That’s all! Be very careful of Otway. He may
be of great use to both of us. You carried out the quarrel admirably.
I’ll meet you again soon, Etta! We’re out for a big stake, and we’ll
win--never fear!”




 CHAPTER VII.
 THE MAN WITH RED HAIR

When that morning, after Ashe’s departure, Sibell’s aunt told her
that she had decided to invite Brinsley to accompany them to Cannes,
she at once rang him up to tell him the joyful news.

Then she put on her coat and hat and went down to the office of the
International Sleeping Car Company, in Cockspur Street, where she was
fortunate enough to find that a one-berth compartment on the Blue
Train from Calais to Ventimiglia on the day they had booked sleepers
had been cancelled, so she at once engaged it.

Otway was not yet well enough to go out, therefore she called in the
afternoon and, as usual, sat with him by the fire and took tea and
toast which the housekeeper brought up.

They were both enthusiastic concerning their journey south, for
Brinsley had never been to the Riviera, therefore she described some
of the pleasures and gaiety of winter life by the Mediterranean.

“I’m trying to persuade auntie to send out the car with Craven,” she
said. “Uncle will be away, so he won’t want it. Besides, a car is so
handy on the Riviera. One can run about and see one’s friends, or go
over in the evening to Monte. We really must have it. I’m insisting
upon it. It will be cheaper for Craven to take it across from
Boulogne, than to hire one in Cannes.”

“If you use your persuasive powers upon your Aunt Etta, you’ll no
doubt succeed, darling,” he said, with an affectionate hug.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” exclaimed the girl. “Ashe has gone!”

“Ashe gone!” cried her lover in surprise.

“Yes. He’s Aunt Etta’s right hand, so I don’t suppose he’ll be away
from us for long,” Sibell said. “There was a row after breakfast this
morning--exactly why I can’t discover--but in any case the excellent
Ashe was impudent about some order he was given, so auntie simply gave
him the sack at a moment’s notice, paid him up, and away he went. He
was out of the house in a quarter of an hour.”

“H’m, a bit of an upset, eh?” remarked the young doctor.

“Uncle was furious, but she managed to calm him down. Isn’t it
priceless? Hitherto, auntie would never have a single word said about
him.”

“I’ve never liked the fellow,” declared her lover. “He always seemed
to assume such superior, supercilious airs, and in his face there was
a low cunning expression that always made me suspect him of robbing
your uncle over the wines and cigars. When he went off duty he became
the gentleman, I suppose. I met him one night at Hyde Park Corner, and
he looked like a smart club man.”

“I know. I’ve seen him dressed quite elegantly when he went out. To me
he was, however, always very polite and obedient. So I’ve nothing to
complain about, except of his rather brusque, familiar manner towards
my aunt sometimes. Several times I mentioned it, but auntie told me to
take no notice, as it was only his way.”

“Well, though he used to serve me very well, and was most attentive at
table when I dined at West Halkin Street, I’m rather glad he’s gone.
Why I disliked him I couldn’t tell you, dearest. But I did. I can’t
explain the reason. It was intuition, I think.”

“Auntie has written to a new man, and if she engages him, he’ll go to
Cannes with us. He could go in the car with Craven. I’ll suggest it.”

When Sibell had kissed him and had gone, after the return of the
nurse, Brinsley Otway sat in the old arm-chair with his arms folded,
silent in deep thought.

The sudden and unexpected dismissal of the Earl’s faithful man, Ashe,
puzzled him. Was there anything behind that violent quarrel? He
himself, during the evenings spent at West Halkin Street, had not
failed to notice the familiar manner in which the fellow treated
Sibell’s rather go-ahead aunt. His demeanor was certainly not
befitting that of a servant. Once, too, he had overheard some
whispered words between mistress and man. He was alone in the study
one evening, choosing a book from the shelves, and happened to be
stooping down behind a small screen and thus concealed when he heard
the Countess slip noiselessly into the room, followed by Ashe.

“What is that telegram you’ve just received?” demanded the man quickly
in a low whisper. “Tell me the truth,” he growled threateningly.

“Here it is,” faltered the woman, apparently haunted by dread. “You
need not be so fierce. It’s only from that freak Emily Taylor, who
wants to come to town and stay with me.”

“Oh!” Ashe replied. “I feared it might be from him! I’m sorry. No harm
done.”

And then the servant slipped out of the room, followed by his
mistress.

Those strange words Otway overheard had since caused him to ponder
frequently. Being on such terms as they were, it seemed more than
curious that they should part after a violent altercation.

As he sat he remembered that curious conversation, every word of which
had sunk indelibly into his brain. Ashe’s manner to his mistress was
so deferential and obsequious at table that the conversation in
question both puzzled and intrigued him. Of course he had said nothing
to Sibell, but the scene at West Halkin Street which she had described
caused him again to ponder.

At dinner that night, served by one of the maids, Lady Wyndcliffe,
addressing her bald-headed husband across the table, said:

“I’ve seen the man recommended to me a little time ago, dear. I
telephoned to him, and he came this afternoon. Quite nice and smart. A
trifle younger than Ashe. He has excellent references, so I’ve engaged
him. He is coming to us the day after to-morrow.”

“Good!” said his lordship, settling his dress tie. “I’m glad you gave
that fellow Ashe the sack. He was always drinking my whiskey and
smoking my cigars. I used to smell them when I came home at night. The
fellow used to smoke in the drawing-room. I’m sure of it. Why, I came
in late last night after you’d all gone to bed, and I distinctly smelt
one of my cigars in the drawing-room. Been up there while we were all
out, no doubt. Damn the fellow!”

“Ashe was all right if he could refrain from being insolent,” remarked
his wife. “He was an excellent servant, but he had that one fault.”

“Well, auntie, we’re well rid of him, I think,” Sibell chimed in.
“Let’s hope this new man will turn out well. I’d let him go with
Craven in the car. Let them start three days before us.”

“Who said we were taking the car?” asked the Countess.

“Well, surely it’s cheaper to take your own bus than to hire! You know
how last year we found the hire absolutely ruinous. And one can do
nothing on the Riviera without a car. Besides, uncle will like it when
he comes out. The run across France only costs a few pounds.”

The Earl laughed in his brainless way, remarking:

“I suppose you want it out there because you like to drive yourself,
eh?”

“Well, there’s a good deal in that!” the girl admitted. “But without a
car it’s simply dreadful there.”

A long argument ensued, but in the end Sibell cajoled her aunt into
the idea of sending the chauffeur Craven with the car, and the new
butler, to the South of France--a fact which Brinsley duly learnt over
the telephone.

About ten o’clock one evening a few days later, a rather short,
thick-set man in well-cut evening clothes and a five-diamond ring upon
his finger entered “The Owls,” one of the small dance clubs in Wardour
Street, Soho, the chief patrons of which were writers, painters, the
lesser lights of the drama of both sexes, mannequins at West End
shops, art students of both sexes and their models; indeed it was one
of London’s centres of Bohemia--or what still remains of it nowadays.

The man, who was apparently well known, handed in his coat, signed the
members’ book, and passed into the ground-floor room, at the end of
which was a bar. The stuffy little place was nearly filled by a gay
crowd of reckless young men and women, many of whose faces bore traces
of dissipation and late nights. From the basement below came the
strident strains of a jazz band mingled with gay shouts and laughter
as the man, whose eyes had eagerly searched around as though expecting
somebody, seated himself on a high stool at the bar and ordered a
cocktail. Then he lit a cigarette, and, with one eye on the door, sat
smoking and chatting to the barman, a foreigner in a white linen coat
who was deftly serving drinks.

Suddenly a man entered, and, as the other waved to him in recognition,
came forward.

“Hulloa, Mr. Ashe!” exclaimed the short, thick-set little man,
evidently Italian from his accent. “Haven’t seen you lately, sare.”

“No, Johnnie. I’ve been away in the country,” replied the discharged
butler. “Thought I’d just look in for half-an-hour. Have a drink?”

“Thank you, sare,” replied the dapper little Italian, who was _maître
d’hôtel_ at one of the smartest West End restaurants.

“You remember one day, about three weeks ago, you told me of a young
man you know who lives in the same house as yourself in Guilford
Street--that man who was suddenly taken ill.”

“Oh, Meester Fetherstone! Oh, yes. He’s better now.”

“It was influenza, wasn’t it?” he said, bending to him and whispering.

The little dark-eyed man raised his shoulders and pulled a wry face.

“You recollect what you told me--the conversation about detectives.
There were several young men in the sitting-room that night, eh?”

“Several of them. They were discussing some secret about evil
influences.”

“That’s interesting, anyway,” laughed Mr. Ashe. “They evidently know
something about evil curses and such-like mysteries. Yet I don’t see
why such things as curses should concern ’Varsity students. Tell me
about Fetherstone.”

“All of the boys seemed most interested,” Johnnie said in English with
a strong Tuscan accent. “Fetherstone comes here sometimes. He has red
hair.”

“You told me about him. I wonder if he is downstairs? I’d like to be
introduced to him.”

“I’ll go and see,” said the man from Leghorn, who at once went below
to the dance-room. On returning a few moments later, he said:

“Meester Fetherstone is downstairs. He is dancing.”

Both drained their glasses and went below into the rather low-pitched
basement, which was spacious, running as it did beneath the two
adjoining houses. Around the walls were set a number of little tables
at which drinks were being served, at the end was the usual platform
with its jazz orchestra, while the centre of the floor was so crowded
by dancers, mostly in their day clothes, that it seemed difficult to
circulate.

On every hand large notices stated: “Hard-boiled shirts not allowed!”
together with humorous distortions of well-known proverbs and many
flags and streamers. Ashe and his companion found a table after some
little difficulty, and, the dance being concluded, the Italian, whose
full name was Giovanni Savini, pointed out Fetherstone, who was seated
with a fair-haired, rather smartly-dressed mannequin on the opposite
side of the room.

“Contrive to introduce me later on, Johnnie,” Ashe said. “Do you
really think you are right?”

“I don’t know, Meester Ashe, but I have my ears open you know, and I
hear a lot of discussions. My bedroom is next their sitting-room,”
replied the _maître d’hôtel_, “and sometimes I hear very funny
things.”

Ashe and Savini had been friends for a considerable time. They had
first met in Paris six years before, the Italian then being a waiter
at the Grand Hotel while Ashe was for some months living as guest in
that colossal establishment. Then, three years afterwards, the Italian
had one night served him in the Savoy in London, and they had
recognised each other. The smart _maître d’hôtel_ possessed a wide
knowledge of London’s underworld; hence they were often out together
late at night after the closing hour of the restaurant _de luxe_ in
the West End where the Italian was now employed.

Ashe, with his shrewd observation and acumen, had long ago discovered
that his friend was, in secret, the associate of adventurers and
crooks of both sexes, who brought their “pigeons” to lunch or dine at
the expensive establishment where he was such an ubiquitous and
obliging servitor. And, being attracted by crookdom, he had cultivated
the man’s acquaintance.

Half an hour afterwards, Fetherstone’s lady friend having left him to
Charleston with a white-haired and well-known portrait painter, Savini
went up to him and invited him to their table, where Ashe was
introduced, and the trio were soon taking drinks in the form of
whiskey-and-soda served in teacups and poured from a tea-pot.

The place was now crowded by a very mixed assembly. The theatres were
over, and all sorts of men and women, including many of the
night-hawks of London, were shouting, laughing, drinking, dancing, and
throwing serpentines to the strains of the deafening orchestra; hence
conversation was difficult, and Ashe could scarcely make himself heard
to the young student across the table.

The ex-butler took infinite trouble to impress Fetherstone with his
air of careless bonhomie, but presently a black-haired girl, an
artist’s model, came along, and, greeting the young fellow, sat down
uninvited at the table and began some good-humored banter, which
immensely amused both the student and the Italian.

“I like that man Ashe,” remarked Fetherstone to the Italian as they
walked past the dark façade of the British Museum on the way to
Guilford Street. A church clock somewhere in Bloomsbury had just
struck half-past three, and the winter’s morning was frosty and
bitterly cold.

“Meester Ashe is a very good friend of mine. _Un buon amico_,”
declared Savini.

“What is he?” inquired the student.

“He does nothing. Spends a lot of money, and when he gives a leetle
dinner he orders always the best. He leave it to me.”

“Yes, he’s a real decent sort,” declared the red-headed young man
enthusiastically. “I’m meeting him at the Idlers on Wednesday night.”

“Ah! I am on duty that night. We have a large private party--Lord
Melfort’s coming of age,” Savini said. “So I can’t join you, sare.”

“Do so another time, Johnnie,” Fetherstone urged. “Ashe is a fine
fellow to spend an evening with--full of fun, isn’t he?”

Arrived at Guilford Street, they let themselves into the silent,
frowsy-smelling old house and crept upstairs to their respective
rooms.

On Wednesday evening, according to appointment, Fetherstone met Ashe
in the obscure little club in Wardour Street, where they had several
drinks, and on two occasions girls known to the light-hearted student
of Bart’s carried him off to dance with them. At such establishments
the girls seem mostly dance-mad, for they live a hectic, unhealthy
life, often stimulated by “snow” and other deadly things which are
procurable in secret on the premises--provided one has the money.




 CHAPTER VIII.
 MR. ASHE IS INQUISITIVE

Feigning to be tired of the deafening orchestra and the atmosphere
of the Idlers, Mr. Ashe suddenly suggested that they should take a
taxi to the private hotel off the Strand where he was living, and
where they could have a drink and a smoke amid more peaceful
surroundings. In consequence, half an hour later they were seated in
deep easy-chairs before the fire in a cosy little private sitting-room
in Norfolk Street, with long glasses at their elbows.

Ashe had been describing his imaginary travels in Chile, Argentine,
and Brazil, and told his companion that he contemplated going on a
trip up the Amazon.

“I’m a writer, you know. That is why I travel so extensively,” he
explained.

“It must be most interesting,” said Fetherstone, much impressed by his
newly-found friend’s conversation. “Authors can travel about, but
doctors never, unless they enter the service of a shipping line. But
that isn’t a paying proposition. I’m going in for medicine. When you
work up a practice you’re in the same corner-house for life. My father
has promised, as soon as I’m fully qualified, to buy one for me. Then
I shall be expected to vegetate in some country town, or perhaps in
some smiling village, and remain there till I expire of sheer boredom.
But I’m not going to do that, if I know it!” he declared, with a
laugh.

“I should think not! Be ambitious. Set yourself out a task and achieve
it against all odds. That’s the only way to success, my dear boy,”
said Ashe. “Apart from the scientific interest in the practice of
medicine, I should fancy the ordinary practitioner’s life to be the
deadliest and dullest of all professions--even the profession of
hair-cutting.”

Both men laughed.

“At Bart’s we’re quite a cheery crowd,” explained the young fellow
presently. “We sometimes manage to wake up things a bit in the
evening. But we all dread the time when we are passed out upon the
world as ‘duly qualified.’”

“Yes, I must admit that an author leads an untrammelled life, going
hither and thither over the face of the world just as he pleases in
search of fresh material with which to interest his readers. Nowadays
an author can’t afford to stay at home and write about everyday
occurrences. He must hit upon some new theme, and, if he is a
novelist, some fresh local color not hitherto portrayed. Novelists are
spread all over the world. From the Arctic tundras to the jungles of
Africa and the Far East, and from the film studios of Hollywood to the
slums of that almost extinct port of Vladivostock, are hundreds of
wandering writers, each collecting materials and atmosphere for new
books which, sooner or later, will, in pictorial covers, be displayed
in booksellers’ windows”; and then Ashe, in his well-cut evening
clothes, sat back, sipped his drink, and posed as an author.

“What are you writing about just now?” asked Fetherstone, much
interested.

“Well, I’m busy studying a rather unusual subject--the old mediæval
curses and their results. I want to write a novel and introduce some
curse so subtle that it cannot be detected.”

The young man pursed his lips. The mere mention of curses aroused his
interest. He did not know the name of Ashe as a novelist, yet, being
no novel-reader, it was not surprising that the name was unfamiliar.

“Well,” he said, “we hear much about curses, anathemas, and
imprecations and all that sort of thing in the Middle Ages, but to-day
it is all out of date. Curses are only believed in by neurotic persons
whose mentality is unbalanced.”

“But those mediæval curses, and the evil placed upon old houses and
persons inhabiting them, I am studying, and the ancient beliefs of
some of the uncivilized countries.”

“A most interesting study, I should say,” remarked Fetherstone. “Very
little is really known about them, except that there are some
curiously well-authenticated cases.”

“I suppose you have studied the question, eh?” asked Ashe.

“Yes, superficially. There are several houses supposed to be haunted
by evil in England, and several in France and Italy.”

“Do you happen to know anything of them?” asked his companion in an
artless way.

“Oh, just a little--what I’ve read, that’s all. There are quite a lot
of books on the subject,” said the red-headed man. “The tales of
certain old châteaux in Hungary are, to me, of the greatest interest.
Until a short time ago, though I had heard strange stories about them,
as any person interested in the subject hears, I placed no credence in
their claims. Now, however, my opinion has quite altered.”

“What do you mean?” asked Albert Ashe, instantly interested.

“I mean that it seems without doubt that there was an evil placed upon
the Imperial Palace of Tsarskoe Selo in Russia, and in consequence the
régime of the Romanoffs was brought to an end. It was due to the
baneful influence of the mock monk Rasputin, who caused the illnesses
of the Tsar’s young son. The monk, who was an intimate friend of the
Imperial Family, would prophesy that on a certain day--perhaps in a
month’s time--the boy would be seized with an illness which would
prove fatal. After that his accessory, Madame Vyrubova, the Tsaritsa’s
lady-in-waiting, would treat him, and surely enough on the day
prophesied by the ‘Holy Father’ the lad would have a sudden seizure.
Then Rasputin would pray at the stricken lad’s bedside, and the poor
little fellow would regain consciousness and recover in fulfilment of
Rasputin’s prophecy and mock prayers. He was the Evil Spirit of
Imperial Russia.”

“A very clever bit of swindling,” laughed Ashe. “But Rasputin was one
of the most remarkable charlatans in history. The downfall of Russia
was due to him, wasn’t it?”

“Who knows truly? As an evil-minded scoundrel he had possession of
some secret, and used it to demonstrate to the Imperial Russian Family
the accuracy of his prophecies and the efficacy of what he pretended
were his prayers.”

“Well, if any person learned such secret of evil he could commit any
amount of crimes without being found out, for he might be even on the
other side of the Equator when the tragedy occurred and nobody could
connect him with it. This is a complete revelation to me,” declared
Ashe, with truth. “I never knew that such things could exist.”

“Not a dozen people in the whole world know the secret evil that can
be influenced by some,” the medical student alleged with equal truth.

“And you are one of them, eh?” remarked Ashe, with a mysterious smile.

“Yes. The information came to me in a very curious and confidential
way from an old uncle of mine.”

“Intensely interesting,” declared Ashe, whose face had now assumed a
deep, thoughtful look. “It is just the baneful influence I want to
describe in my new novel. My plot just requires that one thing to
complete it. I suppose the truth cannot be described. It is only known
to a very few?”

“A dead secret, and hardly one which should be revealed to the public,
do you think?” asked the younger man.

“Certainly not, unless in such a manner that it could not be used for
evil,” Ashe said. “But could such a condition of evil be invoked here
in London?”

“It can be invoked anywhere. I happen to know that there is one person
capable of exercising his powers in London at the present moment!”

“Is there?” cried Ashe, with a sudden eagerness that he was unable to
repress. Next moment, however, he cleverly assumed an air of
unconcern. Then he laughed, and asked: “Have you ever heard of a man
named Bettinson?”

“No. Bettinson? Who is he?”

“Oh, I’ve heard vaguely of him as a student of the occult. That’s
all.”

He was clever enough not to press the conversation further, and
Fetherstone accepted him at his own valuation, that of a writer
struggling into fame.

They chatted until nearly two o’clock in the morning, when, after a
final drink, they parted, and the medical student walked home to
Bloomsbury through the drizzling rain.

Soon after ten o’clock on the following evening, while Mr. Ashe was
smoking his cigar in a comfortable chair before the fire, in his hotel
off the Strand, a page-boy brought up a card bearing the name of “Mrs.
Denham.” He rose and gave orders for the lady to be shown up,
whereupon Lady Wyndcliffe, a smart, erect figure, entered the room.

“I’m glad you got my message, Etta,” he said. “I couldn’t leave London
before I saw you. Take off your coat and sit down.”

And he helped her off with her handsome sable coat, which had been
given her by a friend on her last birthday.

“Sibell is with Otway, so I was alone when your friend rang up,” she
said. “Is it very important?”

“Yes, rather. Do you know whether Otway has any friend named
Fetherstone, a medical student?”

“Fetherstone? Yes, I believe he has. Why?”

“I only wanted to know if they were acquainted,” replied the
ex-servant reflectively. “I have reason for wanting to know.”

“What reason?”

“I’ll tell you afterwards,” replied the man, sinking lazily into his
chair again, a mask-like smile gathering around his thin lips.

“It isn’t very safe for me to come here,” her ladyship said
apprehensively.

“Bah! There’s nobody to follow you. You’re getting chicken-hearted
nowadays. What are you afraid of?”

“Lots of things,” answered his late mistress.

“Bosh! We’ll only have to go slow for a while, till we pull the wool
over Rupert’s eyes again. Very soon his own affairs will keep him from
coming over to England and butting in.”

“What do you mean?” his visitor asked.

A deep red mounted slowly to the man’s face.

“You know what I mean well enough. Are you blind? Luck is playing into
our hands, my dear Etta. Don’t get funky.”

He summoned the handsome woman’s downcast eyes to his, and the soul
that looked at him from under a wealth of black lashes seemed writhing
in purgatory.

“Danger threatens us both, so we must face the music,” the man went on
sternly. “Mind that Otway doesn’t grow too fond of Sibell. That must
not happen. You understand!”

“Yes, but love is the strongest chain in the world, and Sibell is in
love with him. Besides, she’s independent now, remember!”

“Then I’m half inclined to think that Otway had better stay in London.
Only he may very possibly be of use to us. It’s quite true what you
say of love. But love has wings, and if you bore it or allow it to
feel lonely, then it can fly away,” he added, with a supercilious
laugh.

Suddenly the determination upon his face deepened, and he said:

“If a certain person gets to London, then we’d be able to climb out of
the soup again. If he doesn’t come to London, then think what it would
mean to us both!” And he paused and looked at her. “Leave me to use my
wits, Etta,” he added, an evil gleam struggling into his eyes.

“And--and you want me to--what?” began the terrified woman.

“I want you to do nothing, my dear Etta, except to keep a still
tongue. Go to the Riviera and enjoy yourself. Don’t write to me, or
try and communicate. If I want to let you know anything I’ll write to
‘Mrs. Harrison’ at the Poste Restante, Cannes. Go there on the first
of each month and see if there is a letter.”

And he rose, a surly look upon his sinister face.

“I know of something that will let the dogs loose on him all right.”

“You--you vindictive devil!” cried the woman. “I know what you are
hinting at!”

“Well, surely we must protect ourselves. He’d do the same to me--if he
could!” And the cold grey eyes shone with a horrible insinuation.
“He’d close my lips if he dared. But two can play the same game.”

“And--and poor Sibell!” gasped the girl’s aunt, pale-faced and
trembling. “What of her?”

He paused, and looked again straight into her face.

Under his gaze a look of abject horror came into her eyes.

She rose abruptly, and put on her coat with nervous fingers, her chest
heaving beneath the filmy black corsage.

She came towards him with knit brows and searched his face nervously.

“Damn you! I know what you mean!” she cried at last. “But you sha’n’t!
My God--you _sha’n’t_!”

The man who had posed as her exemplary butler only gave vent to a
harsh, forced laugh as she flung herself out of the room and closed
the door after her.

“Sha’n’t I?” he muttered aloud, between his set teeth. “You will see
very soon, my lady! And you won’t dare to squeal _because of your own
neck_!”




 CHAPTER IX.
 THE LURE OF THE SNOW

Etta Wyndcliffe had changed her mind. It was a frequent habit of
hers. At the last moment she had decided that it was a little too
early for the Riviera, therefore she chose winter sports in
Switzerland as a prelude to the Côte d’Azur. Hence, a week after her
angry parting with the estimable Ashe, she, with Sibell, Brinsley, and
her maid, left London for Nature’s white wonderland at Gurnigel, the
new palatial winter resort, high in the mountains above Berne.

After stepping from the comfortable _wagon-lit_ of the Oberland
Express, which had brought them in the night from Calais to Berne,
they found awaiting them a powerful car, with chains upon its wheels
on account of the mountain snows, and soon they were on their way, in
the bright morning sunshine, upon a fine, open road which ran along
the lower slope of a steep hill, affording a wide view of the
snow-clad but fertile valley of the Gürbe towards Thun; then, rising
higher, they passed through cherry orchards now white with snow, but
in April white with blossom. Everywhere the spotless mantle of Nature
lay thickly piled upon the wide, overhanging roofs of wooden chalets
and outbuildings. Through quiet little hamlets they passed, one after
another, until, after leaving the pretty, homely village of
Riggisberg, the real steep ascent of the mountain lay before them.

“How perfectly wonderful!” cried Sibell, gazing delightedly through
the window to where, far across the lake of Thun, rose the giants, the
Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau, and others of that chain, with their eternal
glaciers and everlasting snows.

“Yes,” exclaimed her lover, who sat opposite her. “What a complete
change from dark, dreary London, with its fogs and rain! How
glorious!”

“They call it Glorious Gurnigel,” remarked Lady Wyndcliffe, gazing
around. “And it really seems as though the adjective is appropriate.”

They were now in the heart of rural Switzerland, and, as the steep
road rose higher and yet higher by many curves, they entered the great
snow-laden pine-forests, those forests which abound everywhere in that
region and breathe their health-giving odor into the crisp, frosty
air.

Another sudden turn of the road, and there suddenly came into view the
great, long white building where high piled wood fires and a warm
welcome from the genial director, Mr. Schelb, awaited them.

Inside the huge hotel they quickly found themselves in the midst of a
merry winter sports crowd of young English people, the girls mostly in
bright-colored jerseys and breeches, including a few in black, and gay
scarves, with well-cut trousers which some girls prefer to stockings.
The men were mostly in ski-ing kit, and the chatter at lunch was, of
course, of ski-ing, skating, or bobbing. There was an irresponsible
atmosphere of gaiety everywhere, either in the hotel or out of it, for
everybody was bent on enjoyment, the high spirits being contagious;
for even the elderly quickly find themselves feeling rejuvenated by
the wonderful pine-laden air at four to five thousand feet above sea
level.

On every side the country belonged to the hotel. To give one an idea
of the size of the estate, there are over thirty miles of walks and
paths on it!

They rested after their journey, then they donned their sports-clothes
and snow-resisting boots, and went forth into the picturesque white
world to take the Belle Vue Walk, and so make their first acquaintance
with Glorious Gurnigel, the aristocrat among resorts.

Outside, Sibell and Otway, walking alone together, were at once in a
great forest of snow-laden pines and firs in which the whispering wind
was the only sound, for they were now high up above the abode of man.
The trees bring an income to the great estate--not very much in these
days, but sufficient to employ many peasants. In the colony which has
arisen about the hotel there is a sawmill, and in it about a thousand
trees are annually cut into boards, to be sent down to Berne and sold
for the construction of chalets, while the useless branches are cut up
for firewood which, in addition to the radiators, heat the hotel in
winter. Of the thousand or so trees cut down, many straight stems,
after seventy or eighty years of growth, go down to the lowlands to
rise again as telegraph-poles. And, for those thousand cut down in the
thinning process of those delightful woods, four thousand saplings are
planted each year. The number is such that only one tree in four comes
to maturity, for many die or grow with crooked trunks, and hence are
sacrificed for firewood early in their growth.

Thus the forestry on the huge estate is no mean matter, and it was an
interesting reflection, as they sauntered along a descending path
beside a brook--now frozen in winter’s grip--that on those woodland
paths, or open ski slopes, stretching everywhere, nobody could say
them nay.

After luncheon Lady Wyndcliffe was busy with her maid, unpacking,
therefore the lovers wandered along that romantic forest path,
picturesque and sparkling like a Christmas card at every turn, which
eventually led to the wonderful viewpoint called the Belle Vue.

At last, in the twilight, they came to a steep descent, and, rather
than reclimb it, they sat upon a convenient seat to rest.

A bevy of laughing girls in bright sports costumes, accompanied by
several young English undergraduates, passed by on their way back for
tea, making the forest echo with their merriment, while after them
came a tall, athletic man in dark blue, and wearing a guide’s cap,
gliding along on skis.

In the latter both were interested, for neither had before seen a
person on those long wooden laths.

“I’m quite sure I’ll never be able to ski!” Sibell declared--as she
watched the man disappearing along the path.

“Oh, yes, you will. Harman, who was at Bart’s with me, went out to
Wengen one season and learnt in a week,” he replied. “You’ll soon do
all right under a good instructor. I’ll see about it to-morrow.”

“But look how long and unwieldy the things are!” protested the girl.

“When you’ve once learned, you can do anything on them. It’s only a
question of knack and balance, like learning to cycle.”

“I can cycle all right.”

“Then you’ll very soon be able to ski,” he assured her. “I asked the
concierge, and he tells me there’s an excellent instructor here, one
of the best in the Oberland. He’s a Swiss from Mürren named von
Allmen--all the English here call him ‘John.’”

“Very well,” she laughed. “I’ll have John to teach me.”

“Good! I’ll fix the lesson for to-morrow,” said her lover; and then,
taking her thickly gloved hand in his, he looked into her fine eyes,
and added: “Is not this place a perfect paradise, darling--a paradise
for you and me? Compare the hectic, artificial life of overdressing,
vice, and gambling on the Riviera with this clean, wholesome,
germ-free air--this gorgeous scenery, these great forests, and
towering mountains, this spot where all is natural and of God’s
creation. Is it not all wonderful--glorious!”

The girl held her breath for a moment; then, as she looked into her
lover’s eyes, she replied:

“Yes, it is, Brin! I am so very happy to-day--too happy, because
I--well, I somehow feel that this perfect bliss is too complete to
last! I----”

But Otway did not allow her to express any further apprehensions, for
he suddenly took her in his arms and, holding her firmly, kissed her
many times upon her lips.

Then, as it was growing dark in the forest, they rose and, arm in arm,
found their way back to the huge, brilliantly-lit hotel, where, in the
great lounge at the end of the magnificent ballroom, Sibell’s aunt had
secured a table for tea.

“We’ve been exploring the place, auntie,” Sibell said as she sat down.
“The walks are simply wonderful. I’m so delighted we came here!”

“So am I,” declared Otway.

“Ena Oxenford told me about it,” said her ladyship. “She was here last
summer. No doubt it will become a second St. Moritz very soon--when
people know of it. I agree that at present it is charming.”

Sibell looked very chic in her tailor-made, black ski-ing suit and
well-cut trousers, the only touch of color being her bright blue and
red scarf which matched her Norwegian anklets. She wore a peaked
guide’s cap, and into it she had already pinned the little pale-blue
and white badge of the Gurnigel Ski Club, which she had joined at once
on arrival.

As they sat amid the gay, chatting English crowd, they had full view
of the ballroom--perhaps one of the finest in all Switzerland--where
people were dancing to an excellent orchestra. There was merriment and
bonhomie on every hand, even though a party of about sixty Germans of
the better class were also visitors there. Such an incident was not
usual, for in winter Gurnigel is kept essentially English.
Nevertheless, that season such was the fact, and it was especially
noticeable that no racial hatred existed between the two
nationalities. In neutral-Switzerland they were upon common ground.

Unseen by either Sibell or her lover, there was, however, sitting on
the opposite side of the hall a dark, sleek-haired young man,
thick-lipped and sensuous, who, from behind one of the marble columns,
was eyeing the girl furtively as he lazily sipped his tea and smoked
his Egyptian cigarette.

He had attempted a familiar conversation with the fair-haired,
muslin-aproned Swiss maid who had served him, but had been ignored,
and now his large black eyes were fixed upon Sibell, whose beauty and
smartness were outstanding, even amid that very smart crowd.

“I really think that winter sports are a fitting prelude to the
Riviera,” Sibell’s aunt was saying, as she lazily selected a cigarette
from her gold case and tapped it. “Agatha, that little American cat
whom I took around last season, wanted to go to St. Moritz, but I
refused. I’m sorry now that I didn’t go. Of course, you two will go
ski-ing to-morrow.”

“Yes,” replied the girl. “We’re both having our first lesson with
John. I saw him in the hall just as we came in. Isn’t he a
good-looking boy, Brin?”

Her lover agreed, and then suggested to her that they should dance.

Next moment they were upon the well-kept floor of the great
white-and-gold ballroom, where at the many tables around sat a gay
crowd of winter sports devotees, yet still unaware of the pair of dark
eyes of the man, seated half-concealed, who somehow appeared
fascinated by Sibell’s outstanding beauty.

Gurnigel in summer is a marvellous woodland retreat--a gorgeous spot
where no sound disturbs the mountain silence save the singing of the
birds, the ripple of the many streams, the musical tinkle of the
cow-bells, and perhaps the blows of the woodman’s axe. But as soon as
the slow, sleek cows with their bells are driven in and the first snow
of winter falls, there comes a transformation to a great snow-clad
countryside, wherein a gay crowd disport themselves in genuine good
humor and with united efforts to make fun out of everything. There is
no standoffishness, nor are there unsociable cliques. The newcomer of
either sex is instantly welcomed, taken into the circle, so that there
is never any lack of companions for ski-ing, or partners for dancing.

The joyous convivialities of January are events one will long
remember, for neither trouble nor expense are spared to effect the
success of the various festivals, the guests entering into the true
spirit of things, so that there is not a single dull moment; all goes
with a swing, and it becomes a time of strenuous gaiety. If the
weather happens to be bad, or the snow may leave a little to be
desired, then there are all kinds of indoor games--bowls, indoor
curling, ping-pong, and hosts of other diversions, the tea-time
dancing being not the least, and the merry crowd pities the poor
drenched and fog-bound folk at home.

It was so with the new arrivals--indeed, with everyone who came fresh
from London.

Glorious Gurnigel was, they found, indeed glorious in every sense of
the term.

When, later, Sibell, in a dainty white dance frock embroidered with
beads, which suited her fair complexion so admirably, came down to
meet the young doctor for dinner, she encountered in the long,
red-carpeted corridor, that ran parallel with the ballroom, the tall,
erect young man whose eyes had been on her while she had sat at tea
and while she had danced.

He idled past her, smiled broadly, whispered something, and, bowing,
wished her “Good evening” in a low tone in German.

With her English hauteur she drew herself up, stared him full in the
face, and passed on, nevertheless remembering that at such resorts
introductions are easily made, and friendships as easily dropped.

When, a few moments later, Otway and her aunt joined her, she made no
mention of the incident. She knew it would most certainly provoke her
lover’s indignation that she could not be left for a moment alone in
the hotel without a stranger attempting to get in conversation with
her; and, besides, she did not desire a scene.

That evening, after dining in the fine restaurant, they occupied a
table at the end of the ballroom near the orchestra, and many times
the happy pair danced together, refraining only when a “Paul Jones”
was announced.

Next morning they had their first lesson in ski-ing. The tall,
athletic young Swiss ski-instructor, in his neat blue suit, with his
guide’s badge upon his breast, fitted their skis to their boots and
took them out upon what is known as the “nursery slopes,” where all
beginners make a start by learning to stand on their skis and how to
fall into the soft, powdery snow in such a manner that they do not
injure themselves.

In spite of many tumbles and much humorous banter, they thoroughly
enjoyed themselves for two hours, unconscious still that that pair of
evil, black eyes was closely watching them from a window on the first
floor with that same fixed, sinister expression.

That afternoon, after luncheon, the pair, oblivious of the attention
they had attracted, joined a small party of skiers, and climbed above
the tree-line to the summit of Mount Gurnigel, a matter of another
thousand feet or so, where, standing in the afternoon sunshine upon
the verandah of the weather-beaten shelter hut of the Swiss Alpine
Club, they gazed at one of the most marvellous panoramas of valley,
lake, and mountain in all Switzerland. Before them, far below, lay the
whole of the district of Thun and its delightful lake, flanked on one
side by the mountains of the Emmental, and on the other by the jagged,
frowning Stockhorn, and the conical Niesen, with the steepest mountain
railway in Europe, while beyond rose, white, majestic, and just tipped
by the delicate rose light of the Alpine glow, the Jungfrau and her
neighbors. The scene was like one obtained from an aeroplane, and, as
the others of the party had climbed on skis, they ran swiftly down
home, first over some wide, steep slopes, then, joining the road,
passed along its edge through Black Lake wood and straight down to the
hotel.

But Sibell and her lover, not being able to ski, stood alone and
silent in the sunset, children of the heights. Their hearts were too
full for mere words.

At last, as they stood facing the giant Jungfrau, upon whose lofty
crest the gorgeous pink glow was deepening, he bent and kissed her,
and then, hand in hand, they commenced to descend the steep, winding
road, arriving back in the hotel just as the twilight had deepened
into darkness.

And as they rejoined Lady Wyndcliffe at her tea-table in the corner,
that pair of dark, haunting eyes fell again upon them.




 CHAPTER X.
 SKIERS AND “FROTH-BLOWERS”

Sibell had her second lesson in ski-ing on the third day after their
arrival.

On the second day it snowed so heavily that in the afternoon it
developed into quite a blizzard. But in a winter sports centre fresh
snow is always hailed with delight by old and young, and the morrow,
with its delights, is eagerly looked forward to.

The morning turned out to be perfect, the thermometer down to zero and
the sky cloudless, with a warm, health-giving sun, while deep in the
valley lay the dark rain-clouds, rendering the lower altitudes damp
and gloomy.

The ever-faithful John took his charges up the steep hill behind the
hotel to the gentle slopes at the rear of that range of farm buildings
known as the Stock-Hut, and, halting suddenly, addressed the girl in
his quaint Swiss-English:

“Now, Mees Dare, I will put your skis [pronounced shees] on, here. The
snow is too deep for you to walk farther.”

While Otway was busy clipping on his own skis, John knelt down and
fixed Sibell’s, she balancing herself on one foot and holding on to
his shoulder. When the pair were ready to climb the slope, Sibell
cried:

“Good heavens, John! I can’t get up there on these things.”

“Oh, yes, you will, mees,” replied the good-looking Swiss expert. “It
is quite easy. I will go and make a track for you.”

Then, after a lot of exertion, she slipped and fell in the snow
several times, always being picked up quickly by the alert John.

“Really, Sibell!” exclaimed her lover in a low tone. “I believe you
are sitting down purposely, so that your good-looking guide may come
to the rescue. I’m right out of it!”

He was unaware that John overheard his words, and was secretly amused.
But John was quite used to hearing such talk between young loving
couples who were his pupils on the snow.

As the lesson commenced, John, by giving demonstrations, explained
clearly to both of them the art of ski-ing. Sibell being rather timid,
as are all girls at first, he took her by the arm and steadied her as
they glided together down the slope. Then Sibell lost her balance and
fell head foremost into the soft snow, her skis in the air.

“Well!” asked John, in feigned surprise. “For what purpose do you
fall, mees?”

“Why, to sit down and stop myself!” replied the girl, laughing
heartily as he assisted her to her feet again.

A moment later she fell again, whereupon John said:

“Now, there was surely no necessity for that! Try and get up yourself,
but remember, when on a slope like this, never let your skis look
downhill. You must turn him so that he looks sideways uphill,” he
added. A peculiarity of his English was that to him all skis were
masculine. “Otherwise he will slip, and you will not be able to stop
him,” he added.

After Sibell had lain in the snow a minute or two, twisting and
turning her skis in all sorts of contortions, to the great amusement
of Otway, she at last managed to right herself with the aid of John’s
ready hand.

“Now, mees!” he said, after she had stood to recover her breath. “We
will try the stem turn. This is a very important turn to learn, as it
helps one in all the more complicated ones. Look! Watch me!”

He then glided down the slope a short distance and demonstrated what
he meant, as the lovers watched and admired the ease and gracefulness
of his ski-ing.

“Now, mees, will you try?” he said, on returning to her side, placing
his gloves together in his belt.

Taking courage, the girl started slowly to descend, John following her
closely, with her lover watching.

“Now, right foot forward!” ordered the lithe Swiss. “Bring it round,
and press outwards on your heel. On your heel! Now, hard!”

Alas! by the time the last word of command reached her, she found
herself in a hopeless muddle, and fell half covered in the deep snow
with both skis practically hidden.

The first time one does a stem turn it always puts one in difficulty.
But it is only a matter of knack and balance, and is soon easily
learnt.

John was up with her in a moment, flying down and doing a perfect
“telemark,” by which he stopped dead at the exact spot, where he stood
for a second laughing heartily at her plight.

“Never mind, Mees Dare!” he said encouragingly. “You will find it
quite easy after one or two failures.”

“John!” she cried, with feigned resentment. “If you laugh at me when
I’m in this awful muddle I’ll loathe you!”

“Oh, please don’t say that!” John pleaded. “You started very fine, but
when you commenced the turn you leaned inwards, instead of outwards.”

“Brin! You’re laughing at me!” shouted the girl to her lover. “You
wait till you try it!”

“Now, mees,” said John, “I will show you again”; and he made a
graceful stem turn just near her, pointing out the fault which all
beginners make.

Six times she tried it and failed, but on the seventh she succeeded in
turning quite well, and repeated it twice without falling.

Then, her hour’s lesson being up, they returned to the hotel. Otway
was to learn on the following morning.

That day proved a somewhat eventful one for Gurnigel.

When one speaks of the winter sunshine, those uninitiated into winter
sports in Switzerland naturally think of the Riviera. But in the Alps
they have, in winter, sun hotter than at Nice, with clear blue sky,
even though the thermometer will show ten or more degrees of frost. It
is one of the phenomena of the Alps that one gets sun-tanned amidst
the snow.

As they entered the hotel half-an-hour before luncheon, Otway noticed,
pinned to one of the high pillars of the entrance hall, a notice
headed:


 “Froth-Blowers! Emergency Notice! A meeting of the Ancient Order of
 Froth-Blowers will be held in the recreation-room at 2.30 p.m. to-day.
 All Blowers are to attend.--Blaster No. 24.”


It struck Otway and Sibell as amusing, and, laughing, they passed into
the restaurant to lunch, in ignorance of what was in active progress.

“What are the Froth-Blowers?” asked the girl as they sat together.

“Oh, I’ve heard of them,” replied her lover. “It’s a widespread
society of Englishmen all over the world, They wear silver cuff-links
with dark-blue initials--A.O.F.B.--as badge, while their subscriptions
of five shillings for life membership go to alleviate the sufferings
of poor children. It is a band of patriotic and philanthropic English
to help the helpless.”

“I wonder why an emergency meeting has been called?” remarked Lady
Wyndcliffe. “I know quite a dozen ‘Blowers’ who wear their links both
by day and at evening. Woe betide a blower who forgets his cuff-links,
for he has to pay for the refreshment of everyone present. That is one
rule of the Order.”

“Brin, you’ll have to be a ‘Blower’!” laughed Sibell merrily. “I’ll
pay the five shillings subscription for you!”

And then the subject dropped.

At half-past two, sixteen young, athletic Englishmen assembled in a
side-room where games were played on wet or foggy days--which were,
indeed, very few at Gurnigel--under the presiding of the “Blaster,” an
elderly, round-faced man named Gordon Mitchell. A “Blaster,” be it
said, is the title accorded to a Froth-Blower who obtains twenty-five
recruits to the Order, and in reward he wears silver insignia behind
the lapel of his coat.

Five minutes’ grace was accorded to late comers. Then Mr. Mitchell
exhibited his badge, closed the door, locked it, and turning to the
young men assembled, he said:

“Fellow Blowers, we have a decision to make, but it must not be hasty
or ill-considered. We are all of us Englishmen, and there must be no
hatred of race. This is a matter of broad principles. In this hotel
there is a certain man who must be taught a lesson--and a severe one.
The man in question has insulted no fewer than eight young English
ladies. To one he has written an abominable letter, which I will not
read, but I will hand it to you. The brother of that young girl is
present. In another case he followed a young English lady, who is here
with her mother, into the wood, seized her, kissed her, and, in
consequence of her shrieks, another English lady had to go to her
rescue. Now, Blowers, shall we tolerate this?”

“No!” they all shouted with one accord. “Let’s out him!”

“I agree,” said the grey-haired man very calmly. “The man’s name is
Ira Frank, and he comes from Frankfort. We have discovered, after some
inquiries, that he is a sensuous libertine and hunter of women. I have
shown this letter to the director of the hotel, who, in consequence,
has requested him to leave by the next automobile, which leaves for
Berne at 3.30.”

“He won’t leave till I’ve had something to say!” cried the offended
girl’s brother, a young London medical student, whereupon all his
friends agreed, and discussed what should be done.

“Blowers!” cried Mr. Mitchell. “Silence, please! First, not a hand
must be laid upon him, for he is a German. And, before anything is
done, I shall go to Dr. Rothe, the head of the German party of
visitors, and tell him what we have discovered, show him the letter,
and inform him of our intentions.”

“Yes!” cried a voice. “Let’s pelt him out of it! He sha’n’t interfere
with our girls again! He’s tried Glorious Gurnigel--and he won’t come
back here a second time!” Whereat there was a peal of laughter.

“He’ll try and slip away, boys,” said another. “There must be scouts
round the hotel. I’ll lead you!”

“Not until I have heard Dr. Rothe’s views,” cried Mr. Mitchell,
holding up a warning hand. “We might easily create a riot here, and
surely we must not do that! Reassemble here in half an hour, and I
will tell you the result of my negotiations.”

And the square-built, grey-haired man went off to find the leader of
the German winter sports party.

Five minutes later he was alone in his private sitting-room with a
pleasant-faced, polite, middle-aged German, who, when he heard the
facts and was shown the offending letter, sat amazed.

The letter was written on the culprit’s business paper, bearing his
Frankfort address and signed by him.

“Well,” said the doctor in good English, “it is a consolation that he
is an outsider. He is not of our party. He asked to join it, and we
consented.”

“I know we are treading upon rather thin ice,” Mr. Mitchell said, “but
the young Englishmen here are determined that he leave in ignominy.
Before any action is taken, I would request you to consult with some
of the more influential members of your party and ascertain their
views. I would venture to point out this is no racial hatred, for, had
an Englishman acted as he has done, we should have taken the law into
our own hands in exactly the same manner.”

“I quite understand, and, on behalf of my party, I thank you very
sincerely, Mr. Mitchell,” answered the German, shaking the
Englishman’s hand. “If you will wait for ten minutes, I will return
and tell you our views. Of course there will be no violence?”

“None whatever, I assure you. He will be only taught a lesson,” was
the Englishman’s answer.

Ten minutes later the burly German doctor re-entered the room.

“We entirely agree that the fellow should be taught a lesson,” he
said. “With one eye we shall laugh at his shame, but with the other we
shall, alas! cry because he is a German.”

“Then it is agreed,” said Mr. Mitchell, again taking the German’s
hand.

“The relations between my friends and the English visitors are, thanks
to yourself, most cordial, Mr. Mitchell,” the doctor said. “You have
done everything to remove any little prejudices your friends may have
had against us. And I assure you we all heartily appreciate it.”

The Englishman thanked him, expressed regret that the unpleasant
incident had occurred, and then went at once to where the
Froth-Blowers were awaiting the decision.

In a few brief words he told them of his negotiation and the decision
of the Germans, whereup a dozen of them rushed away to obtain
ammunition in the shape of eggs--which they bought from the stores,
there being no stale ones--decayed tomatoes, oranges, and lemons,
while others went out and gathered filth in newspapers. Then, in five
minutes, all the “Blowers” were posted round the hotel awaiting the
fellow’s appearance.

Sibell was standing with Brinsley upon the balcony above the main
entrance to the hotel, and, noticing the sudden rush of twenty or so
young fellows, said:

“I wonder what all this excitement is!”

Scarcely had the words left her mouth than there was a shout,
“Blowers!” and next moment she saw the dark-eyed stranger, who had
whispered to her in the corridor the other night, dashing down the
snow-clad hill on a small toboggan.

In a moment twenty athletic young fellows were after him. The brother
of the girl to whom he had written the letter, a good sprinter, took a
short cut and seized him, whereupon the others pelted the culprit
mercilessly with all sorts of missiles and filth, to the glee and
hilarity of a hundred or so lookers-on.

“Take that, you German hog!” cried the angry brother, clapping some
filth in a newspaper full over the fellow’s face. “That will teach you
to write your accursed love-letters in future.”

The scoundrel had lost his hat, and his hair was covered with broken
eggs and rotten tomatoes. His clothes were such a mass of disgusting
filth that they could never be worn again, and the last seen of him
was his staggering down the hill to the jeers of the crowd, both
Germans and English.

Truly it was an exciting afternoon in Gurnigel.




 CHAPTER XI.
 A VISITOR AT THE GUEST HOUSE

Before leaving for Switzerland, Otway and Sibell had paid several
visits to the long-closed Guest House at Hampton Court, and,
accompanied by a Mr. Sheldon, a well-known author and antiquary, the
girl had picked out a number of the most valuable pieces of furniture,
a quantity of old silver--including two Charles the Second cups--and a
number of family portraits, all of which had been sent into store
until such time as the old house should be decorated and refurnished.

The furniture included a number of very rare Caroline, Queen Anne, and
William and Mary pieces, all entirely genuine, with no trace of the
restorer’s hand.

Indeed, the old antiquary pointed out that a set of genuine
Chippendale chairs and a Queen Anne tallboy were such as might well be
acquired by the South Kensington Museum. Neither the young doctor nor
his rather modern fiancée were lovers of the antique, so they merely
picked out, at Mr. Sheldon’s suggestion, a few objects, as a matter of
sentiment.

On the other hand, the news of the valuable contents of the Guest
House had spread far and wide among dealers all over the country, and,
in consequence of their inquiries, Mr. Gray predicted a highly
profitable sale.

The latter was somewhat delayed owing to certain legal formalities
abroad not having been complied with, but in the meantime Farmer, the
heavily-built caretaker, had many applicants to view the contents
privately, and many a half-crown fell into his ready palm, in
consequence.

Sometimes Police Constable Askew, when on duty on that beat, would
look in and spend half an hour in the little room on the left of the
hall in which Farmer had taken up his quarters, the caretaker smoking
his strong briar, while the man in uniform loosened his belt and
enjoyed his “gasper.”

“I wonder when the sale’s to be?” Askew remarked one rough night when,
just before midnight, he had taken shelter from the storm and hung up
his dripping cape in the hall.

“Not till some legal formalities have been settled,” was the other’s
reply. “Mr. Gray was here yesterday, and told me so. I saw a
photograph of the young couple in the _Sketch_ the other day. They had
those long bits of wood fastened on to their boots--things they call
skis. How they get along on such things beats me.”

“I suppose the young doctor is quite better now,” Askew said. “He had
a narrow squeak, I’ve heard.”

“Yes. He was one of those affected by this house. Very uncanny, ain’t
it? I’ve never been troubled yet.”

“Don’t you boast, old man,” said the constable warningly. “There’s
something mysterious and unaccountable in this old place. I’m sure of
that”; and he glanced apprehensively around the small, dark-papered
room, where a bright fire burned in the grate and a paraffin lamp
stood upon the table.

“Bosh! I don’t believe in it!” laughed the man Farmer, who had spent
all the years since his retirement from the police force in taking
care of other people’s property.

“You don’t believe in what I’ve seen?” asked Askew with quick
resentment.

“I never believe anything I don’t see with my own eyes,” was the
other’s quiet reply.

“Well, I’m not a liar, I assure you. I’ve seen something here--that’s
all I can tell you.”

“And I’ve seen nothing, so let’s leave it at that,” said the man in
charge of the place.

“What about those strange seizures?”

“Mere coincidences,” laughed the matter-of-fact Farmer. “I hope the
facts won’t leak out or we’ll have all sorts of people
here--spiritualists, ghost hunters, and those people whose dead aunts
tell them what they’ve had for supper.”

“Yes. It is to be hoped it won’t come out. I’ve told nobody,” said
Askew.

“But that chap who writes to the _Richmond and Twickenham Times_ may
be keeping his eyes and ears open. He seems to me to be a bit of a
Nosey Parker.”

“Well, if there are any inquiries, we must deny everything,” the
constable said.

“I’ve never admitted anything. You’ve got to deny what you say that
you’ve seen.”

“But surely you saw it too?”

“I told you I didn’t! I’ve seen nothing, I’ve heard nothing, and I
think nothing--see?” declared Farmer. “I’m only the caretaker, paid by
the week to keep my mouth shut and frighten away thieves and
burglars”; and he laughed heartily.

“But what’s going to happen here?” asked the constable, lighting a
fresh cigarette and glancing at Farmer’s cheap alarm clock on the
mantelshelf. Outside, the big trees swayed, the wind howled around the
place, and the rain pattered upon the window-panes in sudden gusts.

“Happen? Why, it will be wedding-bells after the sale,” Farmer said.
“Before Miss Dare left she ordered the grounds to be put in order, and
there have been six men at work grubbing out all the undergrowth,
taking out unwanted trees, and lopping the rest. By Jove! you should
see the impenetrable jungle it was before they started. Thirty years
of undergrowth takes some grubbing out. They’re letting in light and
air, and making a new tennis-lawn. When it’s finished it will be a
very beautiful garden, no doubt. There’s going to be central heating,
baths, a servants’ hall, electric light, and all the most up-to-date
contrivances. It will cost a big sum, but when a young girl comes into
a big fortune, as she’s done, a few thousand don’t matter much, I
suppose.”

“I expect the sale will bring in a tidy sum,” remarked the police
constable, holding his hands out to the fire to warm them.

“I heard Mr. Gray tell his partner last Tuesday, when they were here
together, that the pictures alone will probably bring in twenty
thousand. Six of them have been sent up to Bond Street on show
already.”

“Lucky girl, eh?” remarked the constable of the T Division of
Metropolitan Police, rising slowly and stretching himself. “Well, I’ll
have to go, Mr. Farmer. Thanks so much”; and he finished the bottle of
ale his host had placed before him, on entering.

“So long. Look in again when you can. Three taps on the door if you
see my light a-burning. Good-night, and good luck to you.”

Askew threw his wet cape around his shoulders, straightened himself,
put on his helmet, arranged his lamp, and strode heavily along the
stone hall, and out to continue his vigilance in the stormy night,
while the lonely caretaker, heedless of the dismal howling of the wind
and the many weird noises through the house, finished his glass of
beer, smoked a final pipe as he read the evening paper by the fire,
and then turned into his narrow bed.

About ten o’clock next morning there came a tug at the clanging old
bell, and Farmer opened the door to confront a rather wizened-up
little old man in a drab mackintosh and holding an umbrella against
the pelting rain.

“Excuse me,” he said very politely in a thin, refined voice. “Are you
caretaker here?”

“I am, sir,” replied the broad-shouldered, plethoric Farmer.

“Well, I’ve heard very much about this old house and the treasures it
contains, so I’ve come up from Newcastle-on-Tyne wondering if you
would allow me to go through the rooms,” he said. “My name is
Bettinson. I’m a great lover of the antique--indeed, a collector.”

“I’m very sorry, sir, but the firm of auctioneers which employ me have
given me strict orders to allow nobody to view. The things were on
view some little time ago, but the sale has now been postponed.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the little old man in deep disappointment. “Then the
contents of the house will not be sold?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“And what’s the name of the fortunate young lady who owns the house?”

“Dare, sir--Miss Sibell Dare.”

The old man nodded as slowly understanding the situation. “But I
wonder,” he said, after a pause, during which he drew a ten-shilling
note from his vest pocket, “I wonder if this would be any inducement
for you to allow me just a brief glance through the rooms?”

Farmer smiled. Caretakers are all human, and, after all, there could
be little danger of theft in allowing the inoffensive, odd-looking old
fellow a peep at the shabby, neglected rooms.

Two minutes later old Mr. Bettinson was inside, and, leaving his
umbrella in the hall, followed his guide first into the library, where
the books had already been tied in parcels ready for offering at
auction, though nothing had yet been catalogued or numbered. The heavy
furniture in the dining-room, especially the long oak refectory-table,
with its bulbous legs and worn struts, attracted him.

“A perfect specimen!” he exclaimed, as though to himself. “Genuine
Tudor, without a doubt!” And he placed his fingers caressingly upon
the polished wood.

The huge buffet also attracted his admiration, as well as a pair of
Queen Anne candelabra and a large silver salver of the same period.

Then, upstairs, he stood for some moments in the big drawing-room,
gazing around in a strange, half-bewildered manner. He sat upon the
big old velvet-covered chair--the same into which Mr. Gray, the estate
agent, had sunk when he had had that mysterious attack--and admired
many of the unique pieces of furniture, including the big carved
chair, with its tattered crimson covering, in which he was seated.

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “A perfect museum! Why, this collection
ought never to be dispersed. It is a sin. The house and its contents
should be acquired by the nation.”

“The young lady can’t sell it, I believe, sir,” remarked his guide.
“By the terms of the will she is compelled to live here.”

“Ah! The testator was some fool of a crank, I suppose,” snapped the
old man. “Fancy condemning any young girl to live in a dismal place
like this!”

“She’s going to be married, so I suppose they’ll renovate the place
and make it their headquarters,” Farmer said. “But I’ve heard that
she’s hitherto been abroad a lot.”

“Well, this is no house for a young couple,” grunted old Mr. Bettinson
as, after sitting in contemplation for a quarter of an hour, he arose
from the huge chair of carved walnut--a handsome Italian Renaissance
piece--following the stout man in charge into other rooms on the same
floor, where, through the dingy panes of old green glass, the garden,
with its high holly hedges now trimmed and clipped, could be seen.

“I’ve noted one or two pieces which I intend to buy,” the old man said
as he at last descended the stairs, thanking his conductor for
allowing him sight of them. “I shall commission a dealer to secure
them for me. I mean to have them, regardless of what others will
offer. I’m a collector, as I’ve told you, and when I set my mind on
buying a piece I never rest until it is mine. It may be bought over my
head and be sent away, but I follow it and always get it in the long
run, for I never mind what price I pay.”

“Well, sir, I’m glad you are satisfied,” Farmer said pleasantly,
whereupon the old chap drew out his leather cigar-case and emptied it
into the caretaker’s hands. “Here,” he said, “take them. You’ll find
they’re pretty good ones”; and Farmer’s trained eye saw that they were
of a very expensive and choice variety.

“Funny old bloke!” he remarked aloud to himself as he saw the queer
old fellow hobble away beneath his umbrella and disappear from the
gate. “But all these people with hobbies are a bit cranky. I’ve seen
such lots of ’em in my time.”

That same afternoon, just before dark, the bell rang, and Farmer went
to the door, believing it to be the milkman, when, to his surprise, he
found the same old gentleman standing beneath the porch.

“Hulloa!” he exclaimed. “Good afternoon, sir.”

“Good afternoon,” responded old Mr. Bettinson. “I’m so sorry to
trouble you,” he went on apologetically, “but I hope this will act as
solace for again disturbing you”; and he handed him a second
ten-shilling note. “The fact is that I want to have a second look at
that exquisite little inlaid tallboy in the drawing-room. I want to
make up my mind as to how much I shall bid for it.”

“Oh, certainly, sir,” said Farmer politely. “Come in. There’s just
enough light, I think, to enable you to see it. But I’ll bring up a
lamp”; and he allowed the old man to reclimb the wide, old-fashioned
stairs to the first floor.

He ascended slowly, mumbling something to himself, while Farmer went
down to the basement to obtain his hurricane lamp. Having lit it, he
followed the old visitor, whom he discovered standing in the centre of
the big, dark room with his arms outstretched, waving them wildly
towards the windows, with his head thrown back, uttering some kind of
weird incantation which was all gibberish to him.

“What the deuce are you doing?” demanded the caretaker. “Have you
suddenly gone crazy?”

But, without response, the old man, his thin hands outstretched, a
weird and mysterious figure in the faint light shed by the lantern,
turned slowly towards him, still continuing his monotonous gibberish
drone in which “The Voice of the Four Winds,” “Unconquerable Spirit of
Satin,” “Ruler of Thy Life,” “The Evil World,” “The Plane of Human
Perfection,” “The Sacred Cubit,” “The Rejoin of the Well-Shaft’s Upper
Mouth,” “The Glory of Death,” and “When Restitution is Complete,” were
the only words distinguishable. For the rest, the man’s utterances
might have been in Arabic, Hebrew, or Chinese so far as Farmer could
understand them.

“Look here!” he said with humor. “You’d better get out of this, old
sonny! You’ve evidently got bats in the belfry! For Heaven’s sake get
away, and don’t look at me like that!”

The old stranger’s face had become long, drawn, and evilly distorted,
as though he had taken leave of his senses or had become entranced.
His bony hands clutched the air as he continued to wave his arms and
call down some blessing or some curse upon the mysterious house and
its contents, until Farmer, not usually perturbed, began to grow
apprehensive lest his visitor should prove a raving lunatic.

“Now just come out of this at once and go away,” he said roughly.
“Here’s your ten-bob note.”

“Touch me!” shrieked the old man, defiantly clawing the air. “Touch
me, and it will be death to you! I am invulnerable!”

“I don’t care what you are, or who the devil you are, but you’ll get
out of this at once!” cried Farmer, and, with an ex-policeman’s grip,
he took him by the collar, shook him like a rat, and dragged him to
the stairs.

“Now, go down and out quietly,” he advised him when they were upon the
landing. “We can do with cranks here, but we don’t want any lunatics.”

In an instant the old fellow’s manner altered.

“My dear man, I am very, very sorry for you,” he said as he commenced
to descend the stairs.

“You needn’t be. I want no sympathy,” laughed the caretaker.

“Not to-night,” replied the old man mysteriously. “But you will
to-morrow”; and he gave vent to a harsh laugh of triumph. “I warned
you, but you took no heed, so you will take the consequences. You will
see.”

And with those parting words he passed out.

Farmer shut the door, walked back to his little den, and exclaimed
aloud:

“Yes. This morning I thought he was a funny bloke. He’s mad, no doubt,
poor fellow!”

And then he busied himself at the fire, toasting a round of bread for
his tea.




 CHAPTER XII.
 WITHOUT FEAR

At seven o’clock on the following morning, just as it was getting
light, the milkman, in the habit of leaving the usual half-pint for
Mr. Farmer at the Guest House, found a scrap of paper beneath the jug,
while the front door stood ajar, which was unusual.

The scribbled words in pencil which the man deciphered were, “Come in
at once. Am very ill!”

Without ado, the man put down his can, and, entering the hall, cried:

“Mr. Farmer! Where are you?”

Hearing a groan along the passage, he quickly found the small, stuffy
room where, on the bed, lay the stout caretaker, half dressed,
writhing in apparent pain.

“Fetch a doctor, quick!” he gasped. “I’ve been taken ill.”

“How long ago?” asked the man in alarm.

“I--I don’t know. Get Dr. Truman. He lives just across the bridge.
Quick as you can--quick--quick--as--you--can!” And he drew a long
breath and stretched his arms over his head.

The milkman lost not a moment, and within a quarter of an hour the
local, middle-aged practitioner stood at the prostrate man’s side,
asking him to describe his symptoms.

“My heart seems so funny,” the stricken man managed to gasp.

“Have you ever suffered from heart before?” inquired the medical man.

“Never.”

“Then I must take your blood pressure,” he said, producing from his
bag the band of webbing which he strapped upon the man’s bare arm, and
then proceeded to pump air into it, watching the telltale dial
intently. Three times he repeated it, so that there should be no
error. Afterwards he sounded his patient with his stethoscope, his
countenance assuming a grave look after listening for a few moments in
various spots on his broad chest.

“Never had such an attack before, eh?” he asked. “Been exerting
yourself unduly?”

“Not in the least,” Farmer replied in a thin, weak voice quite unusual
to him. “It’s morning--isn’t it?”

“Yes,” replied the doctor. “About seven.”

“Then I haven’t been to bed. I recollect coming over funny-like just
as I was undressing, about eleven o’clock. But I didn’t know anything
else till I awoke and saw it was half-past six. Then I managed to
write a note and put it under the milk-jug.”

“I found it when I got here,” explained the milkman, standing beside
the doctor. “It ain’t like Mr. Farmer to be ill,” he added.

But Dr. Truman continued his investigations, asking many questions of
the prostrate man, each reply seeming to puzzle him the more.

“You remain here,” he said to the milkman. “I’ll go back and get some
mixture that will ease him.”

And, so saying, he went out to his little two-seater and drove quickly
to his surgery, returning a quarter of an hour later.

After giving Farmer a draught, he said:

“You’ll have to remain very quiet. And you’d better have some friend
to come and look after you.”

“Is it serious, doctor?” asked the caretaker. “I ask you this
because--well, because I have a reason--a strong reason.”

“It might be serious if you’re not very careful,” was Truman’s reply.

The patient drew a long breath, and then allowed the doctor, assisted
by the milkman, to undress him and put him into bed.

When at last he was more comfortable, he turned to Dr. Truman, and
said in a low, weak voice, hardly above a whisper:

“Doctor, I want to tell you what happened here yesterday”; and he
motioned Truman to a chair, while the milkman still stood by to
listen.

“I--I had a visitor yesterday--a very extraordinary old man he was. He
said his name was Bettinson, and that he was a collector of antiques.
He--he asked to see the stuff privately, as he wanted to bid for some
at auction, and--and I--like a fool--took him through the rooms.” Then
he paused in exhaustion.

“And what has that to do with it?” asked the doctor, interested.

“A lot--a big lot! That old devil came back late in the afternoon and
wanted to have another look at something in the drawing-room upstairs.
I went and got a light for him, but when I got up there I found he’d
gone mad.”

“Mad! What do you mean?”

“Why, he was waving his arms about like a lunatic and shouting all
sorts of things in a language I’d never heard of before. He seemed to
be bringing down the curses of Satan and all the evil spirits on to
this place, and was shouting about the glories of death--and--and,
well, I stood dumbfounded. I think the old idiot was talking Chinese.
I--I fancy he was possessed of the devil, so I chucked him out!”

“And a good job too,” remarked the milkman.

“No, it wasn’t--at least, not for me. When I took him by the scruff of
the neck he told me that he was very sorry for me, because anyone who
dared to lay hands upon him would die. And--well, doctor,” he added
very faintly, “would you believe it that about six hours after I’d put
the odd old man outside I began to feel queer--and here I am!”

“That’s very curious,” said the doctor, now greatly interested. “Have
you ever seen the man before?”

“Never in my life. He seemed to be one of those spooky blokes who talk
to the dead. Perhaps he was holding forth to them when I found him
gassing in the drawing-room. That’s why I put him out. But--well,
doctor, I’m sorry I defied him. He said he was invulnerable--whatever
that means.”

“Well, keep quiet. You seem to have had a bit of a shock. But you’ll
get over it all right,” Truman declared with confidence. “Who shall I
get to look after you?”

Farmer thought a few moments, and then said:

“I’ve got a friend, Police Constable Askew, round at the station. He’s
got a young brother, George; lives over in Molesey. I wish you’d let
Askew know I’m queer--will you, sir?”

“Certainly,” replied the doctor, and, having received the assurance of
the patient that he felt a trifle better, he left him in the care of
the milkman.

Askew chanced to be off duty that morning, and was soon round to see
his friend.

When they were alone together, the caretaker described his sudden
attack and then seemed to become very exhausted. He motioned to the
constable in plain clothes to give him another dose of the mixture
which the doctor had left, with instructions.

“He’s coming back in a couple of hours,” said the man lying in bed,
his face pale and his breathing stertorous. “He told me to take
another dose if my heart pained me. And it’s simply awful now,” he
added, placing his hand upon it.

His friend measured out a dose carefully and assisted Farmer to sit up
to swallow it.

“This isn’t like you, Dick,” Askew said, with a good-humored laugh.
“You told me once you only went sick twice in all your years in the
force.”

“And that’s right. The first was when I was in the ‘Y’. I had a touch
of pleurisy. And the other time was when I was stationed at Leman
Street during the Ripper scare. That’s years ago now.”

“But how did this really happen?”

“I got cursed yesterday,” was Farmer’s reply in a low, hoarse voice.

“Cursed? What do you mean?”

“A darned old lunatic who spoke Chinese or something, and seemed to
talk to the devil in his own language, warned me not to lay a finger
on him,” Farmer answered. Then, after a pause, he went on, “I didn’t
want lunatics or spook-hunters in here, so I ousted him. And this is
what I’ve got for looking after Shalford, Stevens & Gray’s interests”;
and he grinned.

“That’s devilish funny. How could the fellow curse you? Surely you
don’t believe in evil spells, and all that historical rot?”

“I don’t,” answered the man in bed, as he shifted uneasily in apparent
pain. “But the fact remains that I was quite well before that old
scoundrel came and had a liker round. Why he returned a second time I
can’t imagine. There must have been some distinct motive. If he’d
attempted to sneak anything in the dark I could have understood it.”

“But tell me exactly what happened,” the constable urged. “Don’t
distress yourself--just take your time. I’ll be making a cup of tea in
the meanwhile.”

“Ask your brother George to come round and look after things for me.
He’s out of work, isn’t he?”

“Yes. They’re not doing much at the garage this time of the year, so
he’s been put off for six weeks. He’ll be pleased to come round.”

Then, while Askew proceeded to light the fire and put on the little
black kettle, the caretaker related in short sentences, rendered
abrupt by the pain in his heart, the advent of the mysterious Mr.
Bettinson, and his curious attitude on the occasion of his second
call, to which his friend listened with all attention.

“Well, Dick,” said the younger man, when he had finished, “if I didn’t
know you as an ex-policeman, and a man of iron nerve and without fear,
I’d think that it was all your imagination.”

“It isn’t any imagination to fall ill after you’ve been cursed, is it?
And it isn’t imagination that I’m lying here sick!”

“Of course not. But it only adds one more mystery to this infernal
house! You wouldn’t believe that uncanny things had happened in this
accursed place. You put it down to coincidence and all that. But I’m
more than ever convinced that this old place exerts some evil or fatal
influence over certain persons--always men, never women. That’s a
funny point. Why?”

“I confess I’m now beginning to alter my mind,” Farmer said. “I used
to laugh at what people alleged and suspected. But my present
condition is no laughing matter, I assure you.”

“It isn’t. And if I were you, when I got better I’d leave this
damnable place for good and all.”

“I only hope that Nosey Parker who writes in the Richmond paper, won’t
get hold of what’s happened to me,” said Farmer. “I hope Dr. Truman
won’t say anything.”

“Doctors never do. He’s our divisional surgeon, and a very nice
fellow,” Askew said. “I had him when I had flu last year.”

Presently, when the tea was ready, both had a cup, and they continued
to discuss the strange happenings in that long-closed house.

“You know that Mr. Gray himself had a very sudden attack here as soon
as the place was opened,” Farmer said confidentially. “I heard about
it by a side wind from one of the clerks in the office. Mr. Gray has
hushed it up, and so has his doctor.”

“But why?”

“Because they don’t want the place to get a bad name. It’s been made
mysterious enough by that antiquary fellow who wrote in the paper.
Estate-agents never like to deal with property which has a bad
reputation.”

“Well, even now, Dick, you don’t believe in what I’ve seen with my own
eyes.”

“What you said, sonny, was due to your imagination. I’ve seen funny
lights flashing from windows many a time when I’ve been on night duty.
But when I’ve investigated I found them only to be reflections,” said
the retired policeman.

“But your illness is no imagination,” growled young Askew.

“That’s true. And I tell you I feel a lot worse than when the doctor
was here,” said the prostrate man. Then, glancing at the timepiece, he
sighed, and added: “He’ll be here again within an hour. He’s having
his breakfast, I suppose.”

“Shall I go across now and send George to you?” asked his friend.

“I wish you would. And ask him to get me a quarter of brandy from old
Chippy at the Sun. He’ll let him have it if he says I’m ill.” And,
after a pause, he slowly raised himself on his elbow, and, placing his
left hand upon his heart, he gasped: “My God! I do feel awful now.
There’s a pain like red-hot needles in my heart!”

“Have another dose of medicine,” Askew suggested, at which the
prostrate man nodded assent.

Five minutes after swallowing it, he seemed to be slightly better. In
answer to his friend’s question if he felt easier, he nodded.

Finding such a change in him, Askew hesitated to go in search of his
brother, so remained seated at his side, watching him.

Presently he grew better, and said:

“That was a pretty sharp turn! But I’m far easier now. Give me another
cup of tea.”

This he drank with avidity, and then went on:

“I’ve just remembered. Mr. Gray is coming here about noon. Go and get
George, as he must take care of the place while I’m ill. See that he’s
here before Mr. Gray comes.”

“Quite sure you are all right, Dick?”

“Quite, sonny. Why, I’m much better than I was an hour ago.”

And he certainly looked better.

“I’ll leave the door ajar, so that George and I can get in,” Askew
said. “You’ll listen to hear if anybody comes. We’ll be here before
the doctor arrives.”

“Righto,” replied the prostrate man cheerily. “Don’t forget the drop
of brandy. There’s a quarter bottle in there.” And he pointed to a
long, narrow cupboard let into the wall beside the old-fashioned
grate.

His friend placed the little flat bottle in his pocket, and, buttoning
his blue overcoat, said:

“Good-bye, old man. I won’t be long,” and went out.

His brother George was not at home, therefore he went at once in
search of him, obtaining the brandy at The Sun on his way.

Meanwhile, half an hour after Askew had left his friend, Dr. Truman
drove up to the Guest House in his car, and, finding the door ajar,
made his way in.

On entering the narrow, stuffy little room, he saw the caretaker lying
pale and motionless. One arm had been thrown out, and lay limp over
the side of the bed, while the other hand was upon his heart.

The doctor spoke, touched him, shook him, and then listened to his
heart.

In a moment the truth was, alas! too plain.

The caretaker Farmer was dead!




 CHAPTER XIII.
 TRUTH OR FANTASY?

Dr. Truman, who, with his colleague Dr. Greig, of Hampton Wick, made
an autopsy, came to the conclusion that the man Farmer’s death was due
to natural causes--heart disease.

At the inquest duly held he gave evidence to that effect.

“Did the deceased make any statement to you before he died?” inquired
the white-headed Coroner. “I ask this because rumors are afloat
concerning certain mysterious happenings previously in the Guest
House.”

“Well, he certainly made a rambling and rather fantastic statement,”
replied the doctor. “I regarded it as imagination.”

“Please tell us what he said,” said the Coroner, pausing with his pen
in his hand as he sat facing the thirty or so interested members of
the public who attended out of curiosity, as people always do at
inquests.

“He told me how, on the previous day, a short old gentleman, who gave
his name as Bettinson and announced himself to be a collector of
antique furniture, presented himself at the door, and that, contrary
to the orders he had received from his employers, Shalford & Co., the
estate-agents, he had taken him through the rooms,” said the doctor.
“The man admired several pieces of furniture, and then left. Late that
afternoon, however, just as it was growing dark, he returned and asked
to be allowed another look at a piece in the upstairs drawing-room. It
being dark, the deceased went to obtain a lamp, when, on gaining the
upstairs room, he found the old stranger throwing his arms about and
uttering some weird incantations--‘cursing the house,’ he described
it.”

“Curious,” remarked the Coroner. “And what else?”

“The deceased told me that his visitor appeared to have suddenly gone
mad, and, turning to him, cursed him also, using some language which
he had never heard before. The stranger declared that he was
invulnerable, but the deceased said he took him by the collar and
dragged him to the head of the stairs. Thereupon the old man expressed
sorrow at what his fate would be--death!”

There was a moment’s silence when the doctor had concluded.

“Yes, I quite agree. A most fantastic story. He must have imagined
it,” said the Coroner. “A stranger uttering incantations and
predicting death to those who dare to lay hands upon him! Most absurd.
The result of your post-mortem was, I take it, that death was due to
heart disease?”

“It was.”

Hence the Coroner registered the verdict, and the proceedings closed,
not, however, without a good deal of wagging of tongues among those
who had been present. Indeed, the story told by the doctor was
published in that evening’s papers, but everyone regarded it as the
delirious imaginings of a dying man.

George Askew, the constable’s brother, a tall, thin young fellow who
had been employed to do odd jobs in a garage at Molesey, was engaged
by Mr. Gray to take his friend’s place as caretaker at the Guest
House. His brother did not fail to warn him of the weird happenings in
the place, but he smoked his eternal “gaspers” and laughed the whole
thing to scorn.

“I don’t believe in curses, or spooks, or anything else,” George
declared to his brother on the first night, when, at a late hour, the
constable, being on duty, dropped in to see him.

George had changed his quarters to the library; he had erected a
little camp-bed which he had hired, and lived among the piles of
tied-up parcels of old brown-bound books which lay heaped everywhere,
ready for the sale.

“Well, I advise you to be careful,” the other replied warningly. “Poor
old Farmer laughed at the evil, and see where he is now!”

“But what is this evil influence, or whatever you call it, in this
house?” asked the young matter-of-fact fellow, who had distinct
political views with a leaning towards Communism.

“How do I know? We don’t know the cause, George. We only know the
results. I pity the young couple who are coming to live here.”

“Bosh! The decorators will clean out all the dirt and cobwebs and it
will be fresh and wholesome again,” his brother laughed. “It’s musty
enough now, in all conscience,” he added, as his brother, with a
glance at the dead man’s timepiece, put on his helmet, and, buttoning
his coat to the throat, walked out.


Meanwhile Sibell Dare and Brinsley Otway were having a wonderful time
at winter sports.

Fresh snow had fallen upon the mountains around Gurnigel. They found
there a gay little world running riot with harmless fun and merriment,
and the mountain slopes re-echoed with shouts and laughter of the
open-air. Young English and American men and girls who, attracted by
the lure of the snow, came there to enjoy the healthful recreation of
ski-ing, bobbing, or lugeing, while their elders found ample sport in
the quieter games of curling, or gliding across the perfectly kept
ice-rinks on skates.

For the variety of ski-runs, and the constant round of amusements by
day, and the gaiety at night, the place was unequalled. There were
ski-races for novices and experts, team races, ladies’ races, and ice
gymkhanas, and lastly “tailing”--little luges sufficient for one
person to sit on are tied in a string of half a dozen or more behind
a two-horse sleigh--which is a merry sport along the flat roads down
in the valley to the homely little villages of Riggisberg or
Guggisberg, where one has such wonderful teas and cakes.

Gurnigel in winter is a veritable paradise for young people. No spot
in all the Oberland offers so many attractions, outdoor sport by day,
and the indoor fun at night. The spirit of merriment is infectious,
and ski-ing is an incomparable sport. No Alpine resort has a better
average of second-class ski-runners, while there are polite English
skiers, many of them experts, who soon put the novice into the way of
passing their third-class test. The talk in Gurnigel in winter is
mainly the jargon of ski-ing, of “stemming,” “Christianias,”
“telemarks,” and such-like turns, while the famous “John” gives advice
and instruction to those who need it.

One day General Horton, an athletic man who was among the first to
introduce ski-ing from Norway into Switzerland, was chatting with
Otway and Lady Wyndcliffe.

“Of course there are many--the _nouveau riche_ and the overdressed,
the people who take Bond Street and Dover Street in their
innovation-trunks--who sneer at the Oberland, and prefer the
Engadine,” he said. “But those are the exotics. I know Switzerland,
and am an old hand at ski-ing, and I know the advantages of the
various resorts, and vice versa. I admit that the Cresta is the finest
bob-run, and that Mürren is only notable for its increasing prices,
its inferior accommodation, and its high excellence of ski-ing, to the
detriment of the beginner. The Kandahars constitute for the main part
the snobbery of ski-ing, and everyone else in Mürren seems to take a
back seat. At Wengen the winter-sport enthusiast is far better
treated, getting better value for his money without that superior
snobbery which seems to have sprung up with good ski-ing, and he is
allowed to enjoy himself just as he wishes. Then Engelberg is good,
and so is Gstaad, and, at the end of the season, Sannenmöser. But
here in Gurnigel one can get all one wants--a better hotel than in any
other place I know in the Oberland, good snow, merriment without women
constantly changing their frocks, and--well, what does one want more?”

And the slim, sporty old officer in his dark-blue ski-ing suit laughed
merrily as he gave his expert opinion, with which two well-known
skiers, who stood listening, heartily agreed.

That night there was another event. The winter fun in the handsome
ballroom, with its colored festoons and gay balloons, was being
broadcast to the world. It was a Swiss evening. The celebrated
yodelers from Interlaken--the best in the Oberland--arrived, together
with an expert upon the hand-organ, the national Swiss instrument, and
a remarkable programme had been arranged by Mr. Gordon Mitchell, who,
as President of the Amusements Committee, was responsible for the
entertainment.

For many hours three radio engineers were busy fitting up a room as a
studio, with a microphone, all carefully blanketed for the
accommodation of the announcer. Then a cable was laid through the
hotel and attached to the telephone-line to the great radio station at
Munchenbuchsee, outside Berne, while another microphone was placed
high upon a tripod near the orchestra in the ballroom--preparations
watched with great interest by Lady Wyndcliffe, her niece, and the
young doctor.

At last, about six o’clock, after the tea-dancing had ended, Mr.
Mitchell stood in the centre of the ballroom, and in his ordinary
voice, said: “Hulloa, Radio, Berne! Hulloa, Radio, Berne! Test number
one.” And then he counted the numbers one to ten, and afterwards
backwards.

The two engineers listening upon the valve receiving set of the hotel
reported excellent results, but on a second and third test being made,
it became clearer and stronger, owing to the modulation at the Berne
station.

Thus by dinner-time all was in readiness to broadcast across Europe
the winter fun at gay Gurnigel, and many of the visitors, who had let
their friends in England know of the broadcasting, became highly
excited and interested.

That night the ballroom was crowded, and at half-past nine, the usual
dancing having commenced, Mr. Mitchell went into the silence of the
improvised studio, where he opened the microphone and made a short
introductory speech, beginning:

“Hulloa, the British Isles! Hulloa, everybody! This is Gurnigel, in
Switzerland, calling. We are about to give you some idea of a Swiss
evening at a gay winter sports centre. Hulloa, the British Isles!
Gurnigel, in Switzerland, calling!”

Then, having paused for a few moments, he spoke in a clear radio
voice--for he was used to speaking into the microphone--as follows:

“Here we are, far above the clouds and rain of winter, enjoying by day
glorious sunshine and bright, crisp, starlit nights. The mountain
heights are covered with deep snow, where our young people by day
disport themselves ski-ing, tobogganing, lugeing, or going for long,
healthy walks through the beautiful pine forests. We say among the
young people that the man ‘she’s’ and the girl ‘he’s’! Be it at a new
winter-sports place like this, or at one of the old ones, everywhere
the enchanting scenery and the delightfully pure atmosphere, not
forgetting the exuberant feeling of well-being which possesses
everyone, lends itself to numerous flirtations and snow romances.

“Winter sports are essentially for young people, for they are full of
fun and merriment, and a young girl looks her best in her smart
ski-costume of black gabardine with trousers, and a guide’s peaked
cap.

“Here at Gurnigel, as well as at most of the well-known winter sports
places in Switzerland, there is a merry crowd assembled. In my long
experience of winter sports I have never known a brighter season. This
open-air life in a clear atmosphere as invigorating as champagne, and
the call of the snow--which, once experienced, draws the winter
holiday-makers back to Switzerland, nature’s mountain fairyland--are
responsible for the gay crowds filling the Swiss hotels. If the days
are spent out of doors in the healthiest possible way, the long winter
evenings are not, as some people may think, in the least dull and
uninteresting. On the contrary, the evenings at a winter-sports place
are most enjoyable in that no trouble is ever spared in giving the
hotel guests all kinds of amusements, such as concerts, dances,
indoor-games, etc.

“We are about to show our listeners what a merry evening at a Swiss
winter-sports place can be. To-night we are enjoying at Gurnigel a
Swiss evening--that is, a concert consisting mainly of Swiss music and
songs.

“The Interlaken yodelers are going to give you several peasant songs
such as are sung by the shepherds in the Bernese Oberland when leading
their herds of cows to the pastures to the accompaniment of the lovely
and famous Swiss cow-bells.

“After this you will hear dance music played on a hand-harmonica, the
most popular instrument in the Swiss mountains. The hotel orchestra
will play some dance music. We are also very fortunate to count
amongst our guests Madame Gruscha, dramatic soprano of the States
Opera House in Vienna. Madame Gruscha has kindly consented to give two
songs. To crown the evening’s entertainment, joyful members of ‘Ye
Ancient Order of Froth-Blowers,’ a society well known to all English
listeners--who, by the way, are nothing loath to blow the froth off
good old Swiss beer--will thunder out their accustomed hymn. The rule
of ‘Drinks all round’ for those Blowers listening-in and not wearing
their cuff-links will not be enforced to-night.

“Well, I hope everybody will enjoy this concert, broadcast for the
first time from a Swiss winter-sports resort, and which we hope will
help our listeners to form some idea of the fast and furious fun which
goes on at this high altitude, amongst the glorious scenery.” And then
Mr. Mitchell added, as though an afterthought: “I may say that those
who intend to visit Switzerland for winter sports will find late
January and February the finest time, and the Swiss will welcome you.”

Then the Swiss announcer said in German, French, and English:

“The first item will be the yodel of the Emmenthal Valley, where the
Swiss cheeses come from, sung by the Interlaken yodelers.”

Next moment the microphone was switched over to the ballroom, where
upon the platform stood the ten celebrated singers of the Bernese
peasant songs, in their short black velvet jackets trimmed with
scarlet and silver lace, and their leather skull-caps, the Sunday
attire of the cowherds. At a signal from Mr. Mitchell, they sang that
sweet melody which one hears at dawn and at sunset in summer, echoing
in the high mountains, as they chant to each other across the fertile
valleys.

The applause was loud and enthusiastic, and over a radius of two
thousand miles or so, hundreds of thousands of listeners, who had
picked up Mr. Mitchell’s introductory speech, instantly became
interested.

In the British Isles thousands were listening to the unusual
programme.

Madame Gruscha, whose marvellous voice rang out through the huge
ballroom, then gave a selection from _La Tosca_, in which she had,
only a week before, been singing at the Vienna Opera, and was greeted
with thunders of applause. Then the peasant with his hand-organ took
the centre of the orchestra and began to play a Swiss national dance,
to which the yodelers danced with the English guests in a kind of
village dance, greatly to everyone’s amusement.

Sibell was being whirled around by a stout, good-looking Swiss yodeler
who was an express engine-driver on the Simplon line, when the
concierge motioned to her and handed her a telegram. It was from the
Richmond estate-agents--Messrs. Shalford, Stevens & Gray--stating that
the caretaker Farmer had died under very mysterious circumstances,
though a verdict had been registered that he had died from natural
causes.




 CHAPTER XIV.
 UNCLEAN HANDS

Notwithstanding the verdict of the Hampton Coroner, the police,
whose interest was aroused by the curious reports of strange
happenings at the Guest House, commenced to make inquiries regarding
the deceased man’s strange visitor.

The record of the romance and history of the place, as published in
the Richmond newspaper, had drawn their attention to it, inasmuch as
Mr. Gray was questioned by the Richmond police and reluctantly
admitted his strange attack and narrow escape.

The Criminal Investigation Department explored all sorts of channels
to discover the old man Bettinson, who had been fairly clearly
described to the doctor by his patient. There were two well-known
collectors of antique furniture of that name, it was found--one a
dealer having a shop in Chester, who was a man of thirty-five who had
recently succeeded to the business of his dead father; a second was a
solicitor in Plymouth, who was well-known and of ample means, but in
no way resembled the odd old fellow who had appeared at the Guest
House; while a third, a man living near Harwich, was reported to have
purchased some old furniture for an ancient house he had bought
outside Ipswich.

The search was, after all, only a half-hearted one, for on the face of
it the dead man’s statement was rather too fantastic to be credited by
many, while it seemed certain that if the old man had actually paid a
visit to the house of mystery with any evil intent he would hardly
have given his real name.

When Etta Wyndcliffe had been shown the telegram by her niece, she had
merely shrugged her shoulders, and said:

“That house is evidently a house of evil, my dear! I can’t see how you
can possibly live in it.”

She had been watching with critical eyes the enjoyment of the happy
pair at winter sports. Thanks to the expert tuition of John, the
guide, they were now able to ski quite well, and do “stem turns” and
“telemarks” in very fair fashion. Indeed, they had both passed their
third-class test, and now each morning they took the yellow automobile
up to the Seelibühl peak, and then ran down over the powdery snow
through the Happy Valley back to the hotel, a spin of wild delight as
the snow hissed beneath their skis.

Etta Wyndcliffe was not at all pleased at the turn which events were
taking. She remembered those parting words of Albert Ashe, her
exemplary butler, the man who held such a strange influence over her.
She remembered, too, old Routh’s declaration that Sibell must marry
Gussie Gretton, and did not fail to foresee that such a union would
bring them both a handsome profit.

Etta Wyndcliffe was out for money always. Smart, clever, and utterly
unscrupulous from the time she was at school, she took the fat checks
from the mothers of the girls she chaperoned, and was hawk-like in her
efforts to get them married, with further pecuniary profit to herself.
In this she was not unique in London society. There were fully a dozen
like her, hard-up women with old titles and without money, ready to do
any dirty, underhand action, or to sell a girl, body and soul, in the
marriage market so long as it brought them a substantial check which
would most certainly be frittered away at baccarat and “chemmy.”

That afternoon, as she sat at tea in the big hall with the young North
London doctor and her pretty niece, her active mind reverted to that
parting with Ashe in West Halkin Street, when in secret the man had
whispered to her, “I’ll meet you again soon, Etta. We’re out for a big
stake. And we’ll win--never fear.”

She glanced through her cigarette smoke at the handsome, happy pair at
the table before her and wondered. Would they win? She doubted it.

The check which she knew Gussie Gretton would slip into her hand, on
the day of his marriage to Sibell, was daily disappearing into the
ether. Time after time she had tried by most subtle means to sow
dissension between the pair, but all to no purpose. Their affection
was complete; and, to her fear, it would be lasting.

Brinsley Otway was always charming to her, though instinctively he
knew that she was no friend of his. He studiously gave her every
attention, dancing with her each night, and never failing to behave
with the acme of courtesy and charm.

Etta Wyndcliffe had written to old Gordon Routh a long letter in which
she realized the hopelessness of parting the pair, and asked his
advice and suggestions. On the other hand, Ashe, after his vague
threat on the last occasion they had met, had entirely disappeared.
She had written him on the second day of their arrival at Gurnigel,
but had had no acknowledgment.

This fact caused her great apprehension. Was he really playing the
game? She knew his hard, bitter nature, his unreliability, his quick
resentment, and his ready shiftiness. She had trusted him for several
years, and he knew certain secrets of hers. But of late she had slowly
realized that he would hesitate at nothing, or even sacrifice her, in
order to gain his own despicable ends. And his estimate of her was a
very similar one.

That night she sent a marconigram to him, addressed to an obscure
sporting club in the Adelphi, where he went every day for his letters.
Next day at noon she received a reply which ran:


 “Meet me at the Schweizerhof Hotel in Berne on Thursday at noon.
 Important.”


Hence, on the Wednesday evening, pleading to the happy couple that she
had some shopping to do in Berne and also had to make a call upon an
English lady friend who was married to a Swiss doctor, she took the
car down the sixteen miles of winding, snowy road to the capital and
put up at the Schweizerhof, that big hotel facing the railway station.
She engaged a private sitting-room and bedroom, so that their
interview should be a secret one. That night, as she ate her dinner
alone, she wondered with what object he was travelling so suddenly out
to see her.

Wyndcliffe had arrived in New York a week before, and she hoped he
would remain there, for there was not the slightest spark of affection
between them. When in London he was only an incubus. True, he
meandered around with her to the drawing-rooms of Mayfair and
Belgravia, just for the appearance of the thing, but he was always
pestering her for money and deploring the cost of everything.

Money had come to her niece, it was true, but how could she profit by
the sudden turn of fortune?

Impatiently she awaited from her window the arrival of the Oberland
express from Boulogne, until at last she descried Ashe’s tall, burly
figure in a dark overcoat, followed by a hotel porter carrying his
suitcase, crossing the wide square to the hotel.

Five minutes later he entered her sitting-room, and, throwing off his
travelling-coat, cast himself into a chair.

He explained that he had breakfasted on the train after passing the
frontier at Delle, and then lit a cigarette.

“Well?” she asked, leaning against the table and facing him. “What’s
the matter?”

“A lot,” he snapped. “Lock the door and speak in whispers.”

When she had crossed the room and bolted the door, he looked straight
into her face, and said in a low, serious voice:

“We’re in an infernally tight corner, Etta!”

“How?” she asked apprehensively.

“Rupert is in London!”

“Rupert!” she gasped, and in an instant her lips blanched as a look of
terror overspread her face.

“Yes,” he whispered. “And he knows a lot--a damned lot more than is
good for us!”

“You’ve seen him, eh?” she gasped.

“I’ve seen him. But he hasn’t seen me.”

“That’s good. What are we to do?”

“I’ve come here to talk the matter over with you, my dear Etta,” said
the ex-butler. “We’ve got to face the music. That’s plain.”

“How?”

Her visitor paused for some moments, his dark, narrow eyes set upon
hers.

“For God’s sake,” she cried, “don’t look at me like that, Albert!”

“Do you forget how we parted in that little hotel in Norfolk Street?”
he asked, still gazing at her intently.

“You threatened to--to----” And she paused.

“I simply pointed out to you the only way in which we could save
ourselves if Rupert came to London,” he said quietly. “Well--he’s
come! It’s now up to us to take the initiative. You know what I mean,
don’t you?” And he looked steadily into her eyes.

“You mean what you hinted at when we last met!” she cried suddenly,
covering her face with her white, bejewelled hands.

“You defied me! You told me that you forbade it, Etta,” he said quite
quietly. “Well, if you wish to have the whole sordid story exposed in
a criminal court and go to prison perhaps for the remainder of your
life, you can do so,” he went on, with an air of nonchalance.
“Personally, I intend to save myself, whatever your decision may be.”

“No, Albert, don’t desert me; no, I beg of you,” cried the unhappy
peeress. “I’ve always stuck to you.”

“Except when you grow chicken-hearted, as you did at Norfolk Street,
and--and once when you thought you could feather your nest without my
help.”

“What do you mean?” she asked in instant defiance.

“Oh, nothing,” he said sneeringly.

“I demand to know what is passing through your mind!” she cried, her
fists clenched as she stood before him.

“Only one simple little incident,” he answered, with a faint smile.
“The tragic death of that poor little American girl Heula Murray on
board the Nile boat an hour before it was moored at Assouan. She died
of pneumonia, didn’t she?”

“You swine!” she cried, striking him full in the face with her fist.
“I know what you insinuate,” she cried. “But it’s a lie--a damned lie,
and you shall prove it. You’ve hinted at that before. You were with
me!”

“I was--as your servant. But, my dear Etta, don’t get excited,” he
said, his face reddened where she had struck him. “I don’t intend to
give you away, even though I have retained a certain little capsule
which was hermetically sealed before you broke it open. No, my dear
girl, don’t worry. It isn’t worth while. Please understand that we’re
both sailing in the same boat, and if you go on the rocks I’ll go with
you. But we are going to steer clear, into smooth waters, or I’m much
mistaken.”

“How?” asked Lady Wyndcliffe, with frantic effort to calm herself.

“By taking matters in our own hands. You will have to meet Rupert.”

“Meet him! Never!” she cried, horrified at the mere thought.

“He’s in search of you; let him find you, and become friendly with
him. Disarm his suspicion, and then----” And he paused.

“And then? Ah! I know what you mean.”

“Well, that’s the only way, my dear Etta. Believe me, it is.”

“I can’t. It would be impossible. I couldn’t do it, Albert,” she
declared decisively.

“Very well. Then I fear you’ll have to face the consequences, if you
don’t make up the quarrel,” Ashe said. “He’s in London in search of
you, and he’ll send you to penal servitude. You’ll go there as sure as
my name’s Albert, if you don’t try and save yourself. Just think!” he
went on. “Aren’t we both on the brink of disaster? You’ve allowed
young Otway to carry off our only decent asset, the girl Sibell. If
Gussie Gretton had married her you’d have got a fat commission out of
it. But, as it is, there’s nothing for us.”

“But there may be,” said Lady Wyndcliffe. “If a quarrel arose between
the pair and they parted, Gussie might easily step into the breach and
console her for the falsity of this young medico. And Gussie, on
marrying a rich wife, would double his commission to us. Don’t forget
that.”

“By Jove!” exclaimed Ashe. “I never thought of that. You’re darned
clever, Etta--one of the cleverest women I know. The worst of it is
that after the affair of that little American girl in Egypt, which
reaped you in a full five thousand pounds, you are so very punctilious
over dealing with an enemy.”

“Because I now trust nobody,” she snapped. “Once I trusted you, but I
have ever since had occasion to regret it.”

“Thanks, my dear girl, you are really most polite,” he laughed, with
mock courtesy. “But, you see, I, too, don’t put any faith in you.
Nevertheless, if you don’t stick by me, you can do the reverse. I
shall leave Berne to-night, and I sha’n’t care for you, or for the
future. I know how to save myself. I prepared my channel of escape
long ago.”

The Countess of Wyndcliffe took her gold cigarette-case from her bag,
and, opening it, slowly selected a cigarette. She tapped it quietly
and then lit it, first going to the window to gaze out on the trams
passing across the square before the station.

When she had repassed across the room she suddenly halted before the
man who, though posing as her obsequious butler in West Halkin Street,
seemed now to be her master, and said:

“Well, Albert. Let me hear your suggestions.”

“I have two. The one carries with it the other. The first is that you
must resume your relations with Rupert--in pretence of courage. The
second is that Sibell and young Otway must be parted at all
hazards--by you.”

“Then the girl must be part of the sacrifice, eh?” asked her aunt,
with knit brows.

“It can’t be helped. There’s no money for us if they marry. And old
Routh is also out for profit. I saw him in London the other day, and
he’s dead against the marriage and Sibell’s money slipping away from
us all.”

“But about Rupert? Do you think he can be kept quiet, after all that’s
happened?”

“Only by you,” he said, with a sudden change in his voice from
defiance to softness. “You know what a seductive little devil you can
be when you like, Etta. God! you can charm any man of any age.”

“And without--without a tragedy. Assure me of that?” she said eagerly.

Albert Ashe remained silent for a few moments. He was asked for an
assurance which he had not expected he would be called upon to give.

“Well,” he said evasively at last, “if you call the parting of Sibell
from her lover a tragedy, that can’t be avoided. The girl is rich, and
she’ll soon console herself with the smart and popular Gussie, who is
such a splendid dancer, so good-looking, and with whom dozens of girls
are madly in love. He’s essentially a lady’s man, not like that
big-headed, big-eyed, thoughtful doctor out at Golder’s Green. All
that I leave to you,” he went on. “But time presses. Leave the
turtledoves at Gurnigel for the present, and slip back to London to
meet Rupert and make it up with him. We can deal with the lovers later
on. It will only be a question of a week or two.”

“But, Albert, I--I really don’t know how to act--what to do--how I can
possibly----”

“Rot!” he cried angrily. “Let me guide you, and let’s both climb out
of the soup as soon as possible with a nice little bank balance to the
credit of both of us--instead of appearing side by side at the Old
Bailey, as we will certainly do if you act the fool any longer. Don’t
you agree?”

She hesitated for a moment.

“Yes,” she said in a low, hoarse whisper. “I do agree, Albert. I see
that I must. Sibell must be parted from Brinsley.”

“Excellent,” he said. “I’m glad you at last see reason. So go to work
with your clever woman’s wiles as soon as you possibly can. Get back
to London at once and meet dear Rupert, and greet him with regret as
his long-lost friend. He must never suspect that I’m in England. But
I will be behind you to advise you and bring you to triumph.”

And he put out his well-manicured hand, which the Countess of
Wyndcliffe grasped in an unholy contract for the sale of an innocent
girl’s soul.




 CHAPTER XV.
 THE SECRET CAVALIER

That evening the Countess of Wyndcliffe appeared at dinner, in the
gay restaurant at Gurnigel, looking radiant in a pretty cyclamen gown
and wearing her pearls--bought, by the way, out of the check which
came to her after the tragic death from pneumonia of an American girl
she had been chaperoning up the Nile.

To the handsome young pair she gave a glowing description of her old
friend Nellie Price, who had married a well-known Swiss heart
specialist, and how she had, after her visit, had her shingled hair
trimmed by a Spaniard who was an artist, at a _coiffeur’s_ close to
the station.

Her ex-butler was still in Berne, and was leaving by the ten o’clock
express for Calais that night--a fact which of course she withheld
from the happy pair. They had been out on a ski picnic with the expert
runner, Mr. Mallins, who had taken out a party, and to whom the
visitors at the hotel were all indebted for kindly advice and help.

In every winter-sports hotel there crop up English nobodies, mostly
with a military title, who proclaim themselves skiers or bob-runners,
who put on immaculate winter-sports suits and sweaters, and pose as
experts, only to be driven out by those who really can ski or bob. It
was so at Gurnigel, just as at all winter-sports centres--centres,
alas! of petty jealousies, and where men and women make fools of
themselves.

After all, when one leaves Dover for gaiety on the Continent, what
matters? What mattered, indeed, when at a winter-sports hotel at
Mürren the visitors were once invited by a notice posted in the hall
to subscribe to an amusement fund, and the visitors were at once
lavish in their gifts? What mattered when, a few nights later, there
was bought a handsome prize for the best dress at a midnight carnival,
and lo! the proprietress of the hotel won it, and carried away the
prize her visitors had subscribed for?

What matters? Nobody cared. Happily, that was unique. Only such an
incident is actively discussed when visitors to Switzerland return to
London and chat over their reminiscences in their own drawing-rooms.
Yet there remains the fact that Switzerland is the winter playground
of Europe, and it well deserves to be so till the end of time.

It was a gala night at Gurnigel, a masked ball, with a midnight supper
in the interval. So after dinner Sibell put on the _sari_ of an Indian
lady of high caste, a wonderful garment of shot orange, gold and green
tissue, with her scarlet marriage brand upon her brow, but masked of
course, while Brinsley Otway was dressed as an Arab sheik, with
darkened face, also masked, and daggers stuck in his belt; but Lady
Wyndcliffe was too tired to put on one of her fancy costumes.

The great ballroom was the scene of mad gaiety that night. As fancy
dresses were not put on till after dinner, the maskers could be
recognized only by their friends.

After two fox-trots with her lover, Sibell suddenly looked up and saw
a rather tall, masked man in the costume of a cavalier bowing and
sweeping his plumed hat across his knees, and at the same time, in a
low half-whisper, he invited her to dance.

She accepted, and instantly knew what an excellent dancer he was.

They went around the ballroom without exchanging words with each
other, until suddenly he whispered into her ear:

“I know you, Miss Dare. When we have finished this dance, will you
allow me to sit with you for a few moments? I want to tell you
something in strictest confidence.”

Much intrigued, the girl, wondering who the cavalier might be and what
he desired to say, assented. Therefore, when the dance had ended,
instead of continuing in the encore, they both strolled away to the
big lounge adjoining the dance-room, and sat down apart from the rest.

“Miss Dare,” he said, “you have no idea of my identity, and you will
never know. I am speaking quite seriously. I may as well say that I am
no friend of yours, not even an acquaintance, but simply the bearer of
an urgent message to you. Before I deliver it, however, I must have
your solemn assurance that you breathe not a word of it to a soul--not
even to Dr. Otway, to whom you are engaged.”

“I don’t understand!” she exclaimed in slight alarm. “I don’t follow
you! At least you can disclose your name.”

“My Christian name is Edward--simply that. Just think of me as
Edward,” was his answer.

“Edward what?”

But he only chuckled to himself behind his mask, replying:

“That does not matter. Will you give me the undertaking I seek? Please
do, as we cannot sit here together very long without arousing your
fiancé’s interest in me. And I am not anxious for that.”

“Why should Dr. Otway be kept in ignorance?” she asked resentfully,
with natural curiosity.

“Because I am instructed that it should be so,” the stranger replied.
“As I have told you, I am merely acting as the mouthpiece of another.”

“You are indeed very mysterious! Surely you can be more explicit!” she
protested. “You ask me to keep a secret from the man whom I am about
to marry. It’s hardly fair, is it?”

“If you give me your undertaking you will, on hearing what I have to
say, quickly realize that, in the circumstances, silence will be best.
Really, Miss Dare,” he went on, “I regret to say so, but there is no
time for argument. I see that the doctor is already in search of you.”

“Very well,” said the girl hastily. “I give my undertaking to tell him
nothing.”

“Good. Then my message, sent you in secret by one who wishes you well,
and will help you in dire necessity, is to the effect that there is a
conspiracy--a subtle and damnable plot--to part you from Dr. Otway. So
be forewarned.”

“A plot!” gasped the girl. “By whom?”

“I’m sorry, but I unfortunately have no information upon that point,”
replied the mysterious stranger in the exquisite garb of a cavalier.
“My only duty has been to warn you. I beg of you to take precautions.
Of how the coup will be effected I have no knowledge, neither has, I
believe, the person whose mouthpiece I am. It was not deemed safe to
write to you, hence this present subterfuge of mine.”

“But how can we possibly be separated, devoted as we are to each
other?” she asked, her nervous fingers toying with her jewelled
wrist-watch.

“Other lovers, as devoted as you both are, have, alas! been victims of
wicked cunning and despicable plots. Parents and relatives are often
to blame where it is a question of money, or of social advancement.”

“But my aunt, Lady Wyndcliffe, heartily approves of Brinsley,” she
declared.

“If you are quite certain of that, then I fear I can make no further
suggestion,” he said, in a voice that sounded curious.

“What do you mean? Do you know my aunt?”

“Not from Adam.”

“She’s sitting over there, in a cyclamen frock, with those two elderly
men”; and the girl indicated the trio.

“Oh!” he said. “So that’s Lady Wyndcliffe! How very interesting. I’ve
heard of her, of course--of her gay dances at Claridge’s, and her
luncheons and dinners at the Ritz. She’s always in the limelight, it
seems.”

“You seem to hint, Mr. Edward, that she is not quite so favorable to
my marriage with Dr. Otway as she makes out, eh?”

“My dear Miss Dare, I hint at nothing. I have merely delivered my
message, in the hope that you will heed it, and keep both eyes and
ears open.”

“What you have said has entirely mystified me,” she remarked. “Who is
this unknown friend of mine who keeps his or her identity a secret?”

“It is a friend who desires to remain unidentified. But do believe me
when I tell you that, although your friend has never seen you--only
photographs of you--you nevertheless have a true friend.”

The girl paused. The more the stranger said the more deeply did she
become intrigued.

“Well,” she exclaimed, after reflection, “if you refuse to disclose
the identity of this unknown friend of mine, please present to him my
compliments and thanks. Tell him that I am much mystified.”

“Naturally,” laughed her companion. “Take my advice, Miss Dare, and be
prepared for any untoward circumstance that might lead to a breach
between your lover and yourself. As I have already suggested to you,
be forearmed against any _contretemps_.”

“Will it come soon, do you think?” she inquired in a low, tremulous
voice, her eyes showing narrowed and anxious through her mask.

“Ah! How can we tell?” he asked, drawing a slight sigh, which she in
an instant regarded as a sign of sympathy. “When the blow falls you
will be expecting it, and be able to stave it off.”

“And may I not warn Brinsley?” she begged. “It isn’t fair to him to
keep him in the dark.”

“I agree. But I can give no permission myself, Miss Dare,” he replied
seriously. “I have to obtain it. This I will do. Look in the personal
column of _The Times_ of next Monday for a message addressed to ‘S,’
and the word will be either ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ And if the latter, you will
know that the decision is inexorable. Your friend wishes you well, but
he is compelled, because of certain contingencies, to exercise the
greatest caution. He sends you word through myself of the clever plot
against your happiness, in order that you may expect and frustrate
it.”

“But is my aunt implicated in it? Surely not?”

“I am entirely ignorant of the details,” was the mysterious
masquerader’s quiet response. “However, I would ask you one question
which your unknown friend is anxious to know”; and, after he had
paused for a few moments, he inquired: “Did your aunt, Lady
Wyndcliffe, once have in her service a butler named Ashe?”

“Ashe!” she echoed. “Of course she had! He was discharged for
impertinence not very long ago.”

“Thanks,” he replied. “That is all my friend wishes to know.”

“Surely Ashe has nothing to do with my affairs!” she exclaimed
excitedly.

“How can he? A mere servant,” he said; and as at that moment the man
in the garb of an Arab sheik was seen approaching, the mysterious
cavalier rose, bowed courteously, waved his plumed hat across his
knees again, and, strolling away, was seen in the ballroom no more.

“Who’s your gay cavalier?” asked Brinsley with natural
inquisitiveness, as he rejoined his fiancée.

“I--well, I really don’t know. Quite a nice man he seems, but he made
himself mysterious. That’s all!”

“He seemed to be talking to you very seriously.”

“Yes,” she said, her woman’s innate wit coming to her rescue on the
instant. “He seems to be a very sad person. A new arrival, I suppose.
He was telling me of his wife. They were both here last season, but
she has left him, and he seems inconsolable, poor fellow!”

“I wonder who he is,” exclaimed Brinsley in sympathy, his jealousy
quite disarmed by Sibell’s explanation. “Take good stock of him, and
let’s try and identify him afterwards. Did he tell you his name?”

“Of course not, Brin. He was masked. And why should I want to know the
man’s name?” she laughed.

As a waltz was just commencing, they rose together and joined in the
dancing. Little did Brinsley Otway dream of those warning words which
had been whispered into Sibell’s ear, or little did the pair suspect
the fatal pitfall which had been opened before them by the base and
unscrupulous machinations of those bent upon feathering their own
nests at the expense of a girl’s love and happiness.

The mad dance proceeded. Balloons and serpentines were everywhere. The
electroliers were festooned with thousands of yards of multicolored
paper ribbon, and thousands of yards of the same clung to the feet of
the dancers. Confetti was half an inch deep everywhere, and, to the
strains of the amateur jazz-band which had temporarily relieved the
professional orchestra, the lovers fox-trotted around the room,
watched furtively by the young-looking peeress in cyclamen.

Sibell’s brain was awhirl. What could the stranger have meant by his
dark hints of conspiracy against her happiness? As she danced in her
lover’s arms she tried to recall all that he had said; all those
meaning words he had used; all the hints and warnings. The latter were
certainly serious enough, but why had he, a perfect stranger, who
admitted that he had never met her before that evening, made such a
curious inquiry as he had done regarding her aunt’s discharged
manservant, Albert Ashe?

She recollected that, although the fellow had always been most polite
and courteous, even to obsequiousness, yet she had always
instinctively disliked him, and was secretly very glad when he had
been discharged for impertinence. Nevertheless, it was indeed strange
that the mysterious masquerader should know of him.

That there was a conspiracy afoot, a secret plot, conceived by an
enemy, to part her from Brinsley, was the main point. What she had
heard from the masked man’s lips held her stunned and stupefied, yet,
by reason of her promise to divulge nothing to her lover, she was now
held dumb and powerless.

Who could possibly be jealous of her happiness? Bliss such as she was
now experiencing amid these unsullied snows had never been hers before
in all her life. Why should it all end? Who was there in the world who
could conspire to prevent their union?

The dance was concluded, and supper was announced. They went to a long
table in the big dining-room, where they joined a party of about
twenty others with whom they had formed friendships in the hotel.
Chatter and loud peals of laughter sounded on every hand, masks were
lifted, champagne corks popped, and serpentines came hurtling through
the air and fell upon the table. But Sibell had lost interest in it
all.

Her keen eyes were diligently searching everywhere to discover her
secret cavalier. But from the moment he had bowed so courteously and
left her, he had disappeared. He had delivered his mysterious message,
and his mission was apparently at an end.

Not far away from her, at a _table-à-deux_ in a corner, was seated a
middle-aged man in the brown habit of a Capuchin monk, chatting
merrily with a pretty, fair-haired girl dressed as a Columbine.

Now and then the man raised his brown eyes, and watched Sibell
furtively, but so changed was he in appearance that it was not
surprising that she failed to again recognize him.




 CHAPTER XVI.
 MAN AND WOMAN

Etta Wyndcliffe, the incomparable chaperon, of dainty frock and
exquisite etiquette, entered Sibell’s room just after finishing her
coffee and rolls, as she was in the act of taking up her strong,
well-oiled ski-boots. To get into ski-ing kit is always a troublesome
operation for a girl; the heavy socks, the “turn-overs,” the Norwegian
bindings at the ankles, all go to irritate the wearer in the early
morning.

“Drat this infernal lace!” Sibell exploded aloud just as her aunt
opened the door.

“Do you know, dear, I’ve just had a wire, and I must go to London this
afternoon!” exclaimed her ladyship fussily. “Isn’t this the limit,
just when I was enjoying myself so very much here? Yet I’m ever so
glad we came to Gurnigel. I shall come again.”

“Is it very urgent, auntie? Can’t you wait till Friday week? We’re due
to go down to the Riviera then, aren’t we?”

“No. I must go to-day. I’ve some urgent business with my bank, my
dear. You and Brinsley can remain here, and I’ll meet you on the
Riviera. There is no need whatever for you to return to London.”

“But it’ll be so horribly dull here without you, auntie,” the girl
said.

“Well, dear, I’m afraid I must go. It’s imperative,” she said. “I’m
just going to pack. I’ll get the concierge to ’phone down to Berne for
a sleeper to-night. The motor-car to Berne goes at half-past three, I
hear.”

“Yes, auntie. But all this is very disappointing!” declared the pretty
girl, in ignorance of the real reason of her aunt’s sudden desire to
return to London.

“I know, dear. But those horrible bankers have a nasty habit of
calling your immediate attention to any little overdraft you may
happen to have. And one can’t afford to neglect to call upon the
good-looking manager and cajole him into straightening things out.”

And she smiled at the many recollections of how she had borrowed money
upon all sorts of frail security.

“Well, we’re going out for an hour’s run with John,” said her niece,
“so we’ll be back before noon. Can I help you to pack?”

“Not at all. Bevan is seeing to everything,” her ladyship replied, and
then left the room to go down to the concierge.

That gay little snow-bound world of winter sports, notwithstanding all
the petty jealousies and bickerings of little, unknown people, was a
world of its own, a happy coterie of devotees of winter sports.

The one man in the whole hotel who laughed at it all was Mr. Gordon
Mitchell. He was a stout, smiling, hail-fellow-well-met man, to whose
initiative was due the opening of Gurnigel in winter. He was a popular
artist whose work adorned one of the best London illustrated papers,
an irresponsible Bohemian bachelor who had not a single care in the
world, and who moved up and down Europe as Society went from pillar to
post throughout the four seasons.

He always dubbed himself “the looker-on,” for he sketched assiduously
and saw most of the games, whether it be at Deauville, Le Touquet,
Dinard, or Biarritz in summer, the Riviera in spring, Scotland in the
autumn, or winter in the Engadine or the Bernese Oberland. It was he
who, one spring day, had passed Gurnigel in his car and, looking up at
the huge white façade of the colossal hotel, wondered why it had
never been opened in winter.

His chauffeur told him that it was a summer resort only.

“Well,” he said, “it must be opened in winter. I will see that it is
opened.”

And he saw to it, with the result that at that moment all the four
hundred odd rooms were occupied, while the servants’ quarters were
also invaded by visitors.

The other Swiss _hôteliers_ had stood aghast at Gurnigel’s brilliant
success. Some resorts had not been half full that season. Indeed, two
winter-sports centres had not opened at all. And yet Gurnigel was
overflowing.

But it was due, they all knew, to Mr. Gordon Mitchell, the lover of
Switzerland, and they knew that, being a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan,
he was open to do his best to advertise and attract visitors to every
place in turn in the glorious Bernese Oberland.

In that spirit Mr. Gordon Mitchell watched the course of events. He
was one of those old-young travellers, wanderers to and fro across
Europe, who loved to see young folk enjoy themselves, and, though
something of an old fogey and stickler for etiquette, could perform to
perfection the duties of a floor-manager of any ballroom. Indeed, his
performances upon the drum in an amateur band were well known in every
resort in Switzerland.

At half-past three that afternoon, as Lady Wyndcliffe descended the
snowy steps to enter the big, yellow automobile of the Swiss Federal
Post--one of those long, powerful motor-cars of the mountains--Mr.
Mitchell, bare-headed, bowed over her hand and wished her _bon
voyage_.

“You have my address,” her ladyship said with a merry smile. “Now if
you don’t call on me, I’ll never forgive you, Mr. Mitchell! As I’ve
told you, I know lots of artistic friends of yours of the Savage and
the Ham Bone. You’ll call? Promise me. And do look after Sibell and
Brinsley for me, won’t you?” she added mischievously.

The others heard it, and were much impressed.

“We’ll look after Mr. Mitchell for you, auntie!” cried Sibell in
defiance, waving her hand merrily as Etta, in her magnificent sable
coat, climbed into the big autobus.

Shouts, hand-waves, and a low bow from the black frock-coated
concierge with keys upon his shoulders, and the post automobile, with
heavy chains on all four wheels, started down the steep, slippery hill
on the long, winding highroad to the Swiss capital.

Then, when Lady Wyndcliffe had gone, Sibell and her lover took a luge
and, seated together upon it, started down the steep run at an
exhilarating pace, both yelling “_Achtung!_” as warning to any
pedestrians in their path.

Yet all day Sibell could not put from herself the remembrance of that
dark man of mystery who, dressed as a cavalier, had told her such a
strange, remarkable story. A hundred times she wondered why he had
made that queer inquiry regarding the identity of Albert Ashe. What
could he know of her aunt’s butler?

At luncheon she had scrutinized every table, but had failed to
identify her masked informant. Some visitors had left by the early
morning autobus at eight o’clock, so she concluded that he must have
been among them.

She longed to be able to tell Brinsley of what the stranger had said,
but she saw that she would be compelled to await the cryptic message
in the personal column of _The Times_.

So the days passed--bright, sunlit days, with cloudless skies and
perfect snow, and frosty nights, brilliant and starlit, most perfect
weather for winter sports. At last one afternoon the post came in. She
saw the page carry _The Times_ to the reading-room, and pounced
eagerly upon it. Yes, the message was there at the top of the second
column, addressed to her. But it was in the negative.

Brinsley Otway was to be kept in ignorance of the plot against them!


That same afternoon was dark and rainy in London, as Lady Wyndcliffe
climbed the stairs of some bachelor chambers in Duke Street, St.
James’s, and rapped upon a door, which was quickly opened by her
ex-butler, Ashe.

“Well, Etta?” he asked, and, having ushered her into a cosy little
sitting-room, where a bright fire was burning, and placed a chair for
her, he said, “How did you get on?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied the pretty woman wearily, throwing her
furs carelessly upon the couch. “The fact is, I haven’t screwed up
enough courage to face it.”

“What?” cried the man, glaring at her. “Don’t be a fool! Why, don’t
you see that every day brings us nearer disaster? Every hour! Suppose
he goes to the police? They’ll soon find you, and it will then be too
late for him to withdraw. You must see him to-night--at once.”

“I can’t! I--I really can’t,” cried the white-faced woman in
desperation. “Suppose he turns hostile, and gives me into custody?”

“He won’t do that if you are clever and don’t lose your head, Etta.
You know he was in love with you, and may still be for all we know,”
he said.

“Not after what has passed,” she replied, shaking her head. “I ruined
him!”

“He’s not the only man ruined by a woman, my dear girl,” replied Ashe
lightly. “Put on your best smile and a little sob-stuff, and he’ll
soon forgive. Tell him you have come to him to make amends.”

“How can I possibly make amends for it all?” she asked bitterly.

“Pretend penitence and make all sorts of promises,” he urged. “Get on
the right side of him, and he won’t harm you. But you must see him.
Don’t let him hunt you out. You are not at West Halkin Street, are
you?”

“No, I’m at the Grosvenor, under another name--Mrs. Wilcox.”

“As I’ve told you, he is at the Carlton,” said Ashe.

“No. He’s left there--gone to Manchester, and staying at the Midland.
I was told so this morning when I rang them up.”

“Then you must go to Manchester to-night. Stay at the Midland, and see
him in the morning. That’s my advice,” said the man, who was standing
with arms akimbo on the hearthrug before her.

“But what am I to say?” she cried in despair. “What can I say?”

“Say that you heard he was back in England, and that you travelled at
once from Switzerland to see him and to ask his forgiveness, and beg
him to allow bygones to be bygones. He’ll do so, no doubt, if you play
your cards cleverly. Once he becomes friendly, then we shall be able
to deal with him and settle accounts.”

“Oh, don’t talk like that, Albert. It horrifies me,” she cried,
covering her face with her hands, a habit of hers whenever she heard
anything unpleasant.

“Well, my dear girl, we’ve got to face the music, haven’t we? It’s no
use trying to evade the issue,” he said. “The first step is for you to
appease him. And in order to do so, you must follow him to Manchester.
Send a page to his room with a message that Mrs. Wilcox wishes to see
him on a private matter. When a strange woman calls upon a man, he
always becomes intrigued. Don’t announce yourself, as he might resent
it.”

“But he might refuse to see me,” she protested.

“He won’t. He’s essentially a lady’s man, as you know.”

“But is there no other way?” she asked. “I feel so terrified lest he
should call in the police and give me into custody. Think of the
scandal of it all!”

“He won’t do that, provided you give him the real sob-stuff. And you
know how to do that all right. I recollect one or two encounters you
had with Wyndcliffe. You’re a damned fine actress, Etta, when you
think it worth your while. And it is well worth it in this case, I
assure you. Upon your trip to Manchester depends the liberty of us
both, so the sooner you screw up courage the better.”

“Couldn’t you go and face him for me?”

“I!” cried the man, staring at her. “Why, I’d be bundled into the
police-station within five minutes. Dear Rupert doesn’t love me--and
never will!”

The woman paused for some minutes, her dark, apprehensive eyes gazing
thoughtfully into the fire.

“But how can I make it up with him?” she faltered at last in a dull,
broken voice quite unusual to her. “Think how I have treated him; of
the sacrifice he made for me!”

“Oh, don’t wax romantic, my dear Etta,” he laughed. “Simply ask his
forgiveness, say you still love him and all that, and----”

“And suppose he has discovered that I’ve married Wyndcliffe. What
then, eh?” she interrupted.

The man pulled a wry face, but, after a moment’s silence, replied:

“I don’t see how he can know. You did not use your own name when you
became Lady Wyndcliffe. Besides, you are Mrs. Wilcox, a widow, now.”

“But suppose he has discovered it, how am I to act?” she demanded.
“What excuse can I make?”

“He won’t have found it out--not yet, at least. Therefore if you act
at once and boldly you’ll hold all the honors in your hands. Take my
advice and leave by the diner to Manchester this evening, sleep calmly
at the Midland to-night, and look your prettiest and brace yourself up
for to-morrow morning.”

“I dread the ordeal, Albert,” declared the unhappy woman.

“I have no doubt you do, my dear girl. But, as I have already said, we
must call the music and Rupert must dance to our tune--if we are to
get out of this unholy tangle.”

“He may have seen my portrait in the illustrated papers,” she
remarked.

“No. He’s been in America all the time, in a place where he didn’t see
papers”--and he grinned.

The woman drew a long breath, and he noticed that her jaw was
twitching. Her nerves were unstrung. So he poured her out some brandy,
which she swallowed at a gulp.

“It all remains with you, Etta,” he said very seriously, putting his
hand upon her shoulder and bending over her. “Get him out of his
present hostile mood. Promise him everything--to return to America
with him if he wants you to do so; anything. Because once he resumes
his friendship--and he will do so if you play the game properly--then
all will be plain sailing for us in the future.”

“You mean--I know what you mean!” she whispered hoarsely, staring at
him with horrified eyes. “You mean that I am to--to lure him to his
death!”




 CHAPTER XVII.
 EXPLANATION AND APOLOGY

“Mr. Kimball says he’s very busy, madam. But he’ll see you for a few
moments. Will you please come up to his sitting-room?” said the small
boy in uniform.

Etta Wyndcliffe, wearing her daintiest little hat and her sable coat,
stepped into the lift, and, piloted by the page, at last stood before
a door upon which the lad rapped.

“Come in!” cried a gruff voice from within. The page opened the door,
and next second Etta and her arch-enemy, Rupert Kimball, stood face to
face.

The man--tall, burly, and clean-shaven, a typical American business
man, upright and shrewd--removed his cigar in amazement, and, after
staring at her for a second, exclaimed:

“Etta! And pray what the hell brings you here?”

“I came to meet you,” the woman faltered in a low voice, still
standing upon the threshold.

“H’m! Thought it best to come to me, did you?” he growled, while his
expression instantly altered, and there was a gleam of hatred in his
sharp, dark eyes.

A well-dressed man of about fifty with iron-grey hair, his sunken eyes
told of some deep sorrow, illness, or perhaps business failure.

“I don’t want to see you, woman!” he flared up, speaking with a forced
American accent. “The very sight of you is hateful to me. Get out!” he
added roughly.

“But, Rupert!” she cried piteously, closing the door behind her and
advancing into the room. “Don’t send me away before you give me a
chance to tell you--to tell you the truth”; and she put out her hands
imploringly.

“The truth!” he laughed with sarcasm. “The truth from a woman like
you!”

And he turned from her in disgust and walked across to the window.

“Don’t you remember the past? Don’t you ever think of----”

“I think of the hell’s witch that you are, and how you played me
false!” he snapped between his teeth. “I tell you frankly that I’m
here in England to bring you to justice.”

“But, Rupert, for God’s sake hear me!” she implored. “Before you take
action against me, listen to what I have to say. I’ve rushed back from
Switzerland to see you. Maudie Ashley wrote to me saying that you had
left St. Louis and were on your way to London. I rang up the Carlton
yesterday, and they told me you were here. I--I wanted to see
you--to----”

“And I don’t want to see you. That’s the difference,” he snarled. “You
came up here on false pretences--Mrs. Wilcox.”

“Because I feared that you would refuse to see me,” declared the
unhappy woman with truth.

“I should certainly have refused. The past is all too horrible. Your
face brings back to me all your foul plots and the evil worked against
me. All my misfortunes I owe to your damnable cunning.”

“Rupert!” she said in a changed, intense voice. “I have come to you to
try and atone for what I did. I know I was a swine to you. But I stand
before you, and--and I humbly ask your forgiveness!”

Then before the man was aware of it she had sunk upon her knees before
him, grasped his hand, and was kissing it fervently.

He tried to snatch his hand from her, but she held his wrist tightly
with both hands.

“No, Rupert, no!” she cried frantically. “Forgive me, I implore you.
Let us talk it all over.”

“There’s nothing to talk over,” he replied savagely. “You wrecked my
life because I foolishly listened to your wicked scheming. You formed
the plot out of your own evil brain; I listened to you, and did what
you suggested. Then, when you had secured your own ends, you secretly
gave me away for the reward, and left me to face disgrace and
punishment. But now I’m free again, woman, I mean to at least be even
with you! Forgive you! Never!” And he snatched his hand from her so
roughly that she rolled to the floor at his feet.

“I got no reward!” she protested angrily. “It’s a lie.”

“Then that man who was behind your evil schemes took it. They told me
all afterwards!”

“I know nothing about it, Rupert,” she said. “I admit that I have been
your enemy. I now, however, want to stand as your friend--to help you
to a new life.”

“Because you’re in mortal fear of me!” he laughed triumphantly. “You
don’t think I’m a lovesick fool any longer? You surely don’t think
that I believe a single word you say?”

“I can’t help that. What I say now, I mean.”

“Become very honest all of a sudden, it seems!” he sneered. “You look
prosperous enough--more than you did six years ago. What are you doing
for a living just now? That coat of yours must have cost a tidy few
dollars.”

“I’m living honestly, at any rate,” was her sharp reply.

“For the first time in your life,” he laughed. “When I first met you,
you were Snakey Toulmin, the decoy of Bud Taylor and his precious gang
of sharpers working the Atlantic ferry. And an infernally smart little
rogue you were. Those who made your acquaintance were always thousands
of dollars the poorer on the trip. I was one of your pigeons.”

“That’s all of the past. Let’s wipe it out, Rupert.”

“H’m! You appear to think you can change your damned black soul as
easily as you can change your frock,” he growled. “No, I have the past
always with me. I had it for those years in a prison cell.”

“Forget it all,” urged the pretty but unhappy woman. “I know I’m
utterly worthless, Rupert. But I’ve never had a single chance to be
honest in my life till now. My father was a card-sharper, as you well
know, and I was brought up from childhood to exercise my woman’s wiles
upon men. I’m not wholly to blame.”

“You are wholly to blame for my ruin,” he answered. “You induced me to
knock the bank-messenger on the head on that winter day in New York
and steal his wallet. I very nearly committed murder at your
instigation in order to provide you with a fine house and fine
clothes, as I thought. But you in turn stole the money from me, gave
me away to the police, and then escaped, leaving me to face
prosecution and punishment. You didn’t think of me, Etta, did you? No,
only of yourself and that swine who haunted you like a black shadow.
I’ll hunt him out one day soon, never fear. I know he’s here in
England, and then it will be my triumph when we meet,” he said
savagely.

“My dear Rupert, I know all that you must feel, and how hostile and
bitter you must be against me,” she said, assuming a softer attitude
towards him. “I deserve it all. I don’t endeavor to excuse myself one
iota for what I did. I only desire to atone for it all.”

“Atone!” exclaimed the man looking sternly into her face. “How?”

“By trying to help you, and perhaps to make you happy.”

“How can you help me? Got any money?” he asked.

“You can’t want money if you can afford to stay at the Carlton in
London, and have a sitting-room here,” she ventured to remark.

“I’m doing some business up here,” he explained. “So I’ve had to have
a sitting-room.”

“I hope it’s a profitable business.”

“Oh, it’s quite a square deal,” he said. “A bit of agency work for a
New York wireless firm--component parts for amateurs’ sets. These
English seem to have gone crazy on radio. It has taken America to show
them the way.”

He smiled, and she instantly saw that his hostile attitude was slowly
decreasing, though he naturally could not at once overlook her
dastardly behavior in stealing from him those bundles of bank-notes
and negotiable securities, which he had filched from the messenger
whom he had knocked senseless at the street corner in Park Avenue.

“Yes,” she said. “The English are horribly slow to take up any
innovation. Little old New York puts a polish on any new invention or
labor-saving device before London can rub its eyes even to look at it.
I hope you’ll do good business in radio, Rupert. And if I can be of
any help, why, I’m right there at once.”

“Do you happen to know any radio firms?” he asked quickly.

“Well,” she replied, “I happen to know one of the B.B.C., and I
daresay I could get you an introduction to several of the big retail
houses, which might be of advantage to you.”

“Very well, Etta,” he said, “I’m open for business.”

“On one condition, Rupert,” she said, with a woman’s clever cunning.
“That you make no inquiry as to my present position or mode of life. I
live honestly, of that I assure you. And my reputation for honesty may
serve you well in the near future. I’ll stir heaven and earth for you,
in order to make atonement for my damnable behavior in the past, and
to put you upon a proper and prosperous business footing in the
future. Is that a bargain?”

For a few minutes he remained silent. Then he said: “You’re a clever
little witch, Etta. You look prosperous, and you probably are. We swam
on the same tide before, and if you can help me, then we’ll do so
again--on the tide which must bring us both to fortune.”

“Ah, Rupert!” she cried wildly, looking into his eyes. “I knew that
you would forgive me. All these years I’ve been filled with bitter
remorse, and have shed many tears over--over you and how disgracefully
I treated you”; and then, bowing her head over his hand, she burst
into quick sobs.

“I--I’ll try and recover your good opinion of me,” she went on, her
tears rolling down her cheeks. “I--I know I’m a worthless woman; a
woman who has wrecked the life of a great, strong, self-willed man.
But it was your overbearing attitude to the world that led me to it.
I--I--was mad. I set out to allure you--to cheat you, to throw you
into the melting-pot--and I succeeded. At first I was full of glee. I
escaped to Valparaiso and then across to Australia. Afterwards I got
back to London, and in the American papers I read the account of your
trial and your condemnation. I prayed for you. I could not sleep at
night for thinking of you in your prison cell, because I had treated
you so, and it was all my fault, Rupert,” she cried, taking him by
both shoulders and looking straight into his eyes. “I’m a woman. We
women are mostly weird creatures. We can’t control ourselves.
Sometimes we grow to hate those whom we really love, and sometimes we
love those whom we hate the most. We are the weaker sex--and perhaps I
am the weakest of them all.”

Rupert Kimball, the well-dressed American, whom none in England would
dream to be a gaol-bird recently released from St. Louis convict
prison, turned from the window slowly.

“I accept all you say, my dear girl,” he said hesitatingly. “But what
I want to know is, how you are living so prosperously. That sable coat
of yours intrigues me.”

“I do a little business in French model frocks and lingerie,” she
said, with the first excuse which arose to her lying lips. “This coat
isn’t mine. I only wear it as an advertisement.”

“Then you are on a commission basis?”

“Yes. We are both in business. So why not let us work together?”

“But you are very reticent regarding yourself, Etta,” he said.

“I have to be. After all, I don’t want my wretched past to be raked
up, any more than you do, eh? So the least we say about each other the
better. Let’s unite our forces instead of being enemies, and let’s
make money. I’ll help you in your wireless business. I know I can.”

He walked back to her from the window.

“Now,” he said, suddenly halting in front of her, “are you playing the
straight game, Etta? If you’re not, then, by God! I’ll send you to
twenty years. You know what I mean--the proofs I have against you and
your accursed hanger-on Belton, or Ashe, or whatever he now calls
himself.”

“Oh! I haven’t seen him for years, my dear old bean,” laughed Etta.
“He treated me rottenly, as all men of his low-down class treat women.
When he saw the red light he turned tail and scooted. He left me in
Valparaiso, and a jolly good job too. He was no good, anyway. He
hadn’t the courage of a flea.”

“Exactly what I thought. But I believed he would have stuck to you,”
said Kimball. “Tell me how you have fared while I’ve been all that
time in the penitentiary”; and he stood before her, for the first time
realizing that she looked not a year older than when he last saw her
in their flat, before he went out on that snowy day with an iron bar
as a walking-stick to waylay the unsuspecting messenger of the United
States Allied Bank.

“Oh, I’ve managed to scrape along. I’ve formed a good many friendships
with people with money, better-class people in London. Hence I’ve lots
of influential friends, and will be able to help you in your new
venture.”

“Not married yet, eh?”

“Married!” she laughed scornfully. “Take me for an idiot? No, I’ll
never be a man’s domestic slave. Let other women have the worry of a
home and children, but not for me.”

Then, seizing her opportunity, she held out her hand to him, asking:
“Won’t you really forgive me, Rupert? I promise that in future I will
stand your friend.”

“Do you actually mean that?” he demanded fiercely. “Can I trust you?”

The woman’s face relaxed into one of those sweet smiles that men had
found, to their cost, so alluring.

“Yes, Rupert. You may now,” she said, and made a motion as though to
put her lips to his.

“No. I don’t want your kisses, thank you,” he said in a hard, abrupt
tone. “I’d rather be without them.” But, taking her hand, he added in
a quieter tone: “We’ll be friends, as you wish it. But you’ll have to
prove your friendship towards me before I wholly forgive you for the
ruin you’ve brought upon me. You told me you’ve just come back from
Switzerland. Do you live there nowadays?”

“Sometimes,” she answered. “Sometimes I live at a cottage on the
Thames. But I’m always a wanderer--just as I’ve ever been.”

“And you call yourself Wilcox--a widow, I presume?” And he grinned.

“Yes,” she laughed, inwardly wondering what he would think and how he
would act if he knew her true position in London Society, at the same
time fearing lest he should discover her rank and title. She saw that
at all hazards he must not know that she, the Snakey Toulmin of the
cross-Atlantic gang, had married an English peer.

Nevertheless, much elated at the successful manner in which she had
appeased the man who had come to England to expose and prosecute her,
she took his hand, and in gratitude, kissed it again and again.

Yet it was only to gain time, she knew. His enemy, Albert Ashe, had
sworn to be even with him if he ever dared to put foot on British
soil.

She knew that the threats of the man whose strange career had included
masquerading as her butler in West Halkin Street, were never idle
ones.

So an hour later she went out to the railway station and sent him a
telegram with two words only: “Forgiven--Etta.”




 CHAPTER XVIII.
 THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

In early February the winter sports season at Gurnigel was already
on the wane.

The four hundred odd people in the great big hotel _de luxe_ had
dwindled down to about three hundred, all of them English, yet the
gaieties both day and night proceeded merrily under the direction of
the genial and ever-popular manager, whose chief object was to know
each of his visitors personally and see that they were looked after by
his efficiently-trained staff.

The Swiss have ever been the best _hôteliers_ in the world. Wherever
you go in either hemisphere, you know that if you decide upon a
Swiss-managed hotel you will be comfortable at moderate expense.

So it was at Gurnigel. The many petty jealousies and little bickerings
between the English clientèle often caused the amiable director to
retire to his chalet at night and clench his fists in desperation. And
well he might. He held an onerous and responsible position, and no one
knew his troubles more intimately than the old artist Mr. Gordon
Mitchell, who almost daily sat in his private office and held counsel
with him.

Mitchell was a man of world-wide repute who had no axe to grind. He
very naturally treated the conspiracy against himself by a few
nobodies as the result of disappointed ambitions. “People pay their
little round sums to a tourist agency, and expect to be regarded as
little tin gods,” was how he expressed it to his intimates.

One day Sibell, who had grown friendly with the smiling, round-faced
old bachelor, was sitting at tea with him and her financé, when she
said:

“Do you know, I’d love to see a glacier. I’ve read lots about them,
but I’ve never seen one.”

“Well, Miss Dare, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. Why not take the
train up to the Little Scheidegg, and go out upon the Eiger Glacier?
That would give you a very good idea of what a glacier is like.” Then,
turning to Otway, he said: “I have to go up to the Scheidegg the day
after to-morrow, and I’ll escort you both, if you like. You’ll want a
guide. Why not take John? He’s excellent at glacier work--that is, if
you can induce him to leave here for three days.”

The idea appealed to the young pair.

“Your aunt put you both in my charge before she went away, you know,”
Mr. Mitchell laughed. “So I make no excuse for the suggestion. You
want to go on a glacier, so I’m ready to take you there. The Eiger
Glacier is close to the Jungfrau, beneath it, as a matter of fact, and
will give you perhaps the best idea of glaciers you can get in
Switzerland.”

“But what is a glacier really like?” asked the girl in her ignorance.

“Imagine a sea of ice with huge fissures in it on every hand, cracks
hundreds of feet deep--all pure grey-green ice--the ice of ages,”
answered Mr. Mitchell, who, in his younger days, had been an ardent
Alpine climber. “Sometimes, if you are lucky enough to see an ice
avalanche, you witness one of the most stupendous alterations of
Nature. You see the ice edge of a gigantic glacier of countless ages
break away and fall with thunder over a precipice, the great ice
boulders bounding from rock to rock down thousands of feet until they
become pulverized, and, like white powder, stream down like
swift-moving rivers out of the ravines, into the valley below. The
sight of a great ice-avalanche is one of the most awe-inspiring scenes
in the world, hundreds of thousands of tons of the remains of the ice
age breaking from the edge of the dangerous glaciers to be hurled into
space with irresistible force, carrying everything before them. It is
usual for all glaciers to move forward some eight or ten inches each
day, and as they move, they form deep and dangerous crevasses,
sometimes two hundred feet deep, terrible death-traps for the Alpinist
who climbs.”

“How wonderful!” said the girl. “I’d love to see a glacier and go on
it.”

“Well, I am ready to take you both,” said the grey-haired old Alpine
climber. “So if you like to fix it, I’m quite game to go to
Interlaken, and then up the Wengern Alp to Scheidegg.”

They decided to go, and two days later took train up the delightful
valley of Lauterbrunnen, and there by the rack and pinion mountain
line for a further four thousand feet, climbing on the face of the
Alps past the popular winter-sports village of Wengen up to Wengern
Alp and Scheidegg.

As they sat together upon a seat at the lonely little mountain halt,
with the dark Trummelbach Valley between them, and beyond, the Eiger,
Mönch, and Jungfrau, with the Schneehorn and a dozen other finely
poised peaks, with their glaciers, black rocks, and fields of eternal
snow forming a wonderful panorama, they suddenly heard a roar.

“Avalanche!” cried Mr. Gordon Mitchell, springing to his feet. “Look!
Several!”

Then across from the valley came an increasing thunderous roar of
ice-avalanches from the glaciers of the Kühlauenen, the two
Bandlauenen, and from the deeply-cleft Giessen and the Lammlaui in
rapid succession, while, from one or other of the five narrow gullies
in the black rocks, the steam of ice, ground to powder, poured forth,
raising great clouds of dust. It was a unique sight and never to be
forgotten, for they were face to face with Nature, witnessing the
irresistible force of the mighty, grinding glaciers, as they slowly
moved down towards the valley, until in the ages to come the last
relics of the Ice Age will have vanished and left their traces upon
the ice-worn rocks through which they have passed.

Have you ever seen an avalanche? The warm wind, known in the Alps as
the Föhn, is probably blowing. The glaciers and snowy sides of the
mountains are slowly thawing. We hear ominous cracking sounds deep in
the crevasses if we happen to be on the glacier, while water is
everywhere trickling across the surface of the ice, for under the
Föhn the snow is gradually disappearing.

As the trio watched, the roar slowly died away.

“Look!” cried Sibell, pointing to another glacier high up near the
summit before them. “There’s another! Oh, what a wonderful sight!”

Of a sudden Nature trembled as though in expectation. They held their
breaths instinctively, when, in a few seconds, they saw great walls of
ice collapse, detaching themselves from the glacier and toppling over
the edge of a precipice, followed by rumbling, a blustering, and then
a deafening roar, as from the lowest part of the glacier the ice
smashed in its fall, and poured through the funnels of rock, far down
into the valley, just as it has done for thousands of years, and as it
will for yet more thousands. The thundering of the avalanche is the
angry voice of the Giants disturbed from their winter silence by the
presence of man. It was an awe-inspiring sight, the memory of which
would live with them always.

That night they spent at the comfortable Bellevue Hotel at Scheidegg,
over seven thousand feet above the sea, and, looking from their
windows, saw deep in the valley the lights of gay Grindelwald
twinkling thousands of feet below.

After sunset a keen frost set in, as it always does at that altitude.
Scheidegg is, _par excellence_, the resort of the practised skier, who
can run down to Grindelwald or to Wengen without danger, and it is
consequently very popular, for the snow up there is always good when
often impossible at lower heights.

After dinner the well-known artist sat with his two young friends over
the big log fire in the hall, all three smoking cigarettes with their
coffee and _kirsch_ discussing the morrow’s adventure on the Eiger
Glacier.

“I’m getting most excited!” cried Sibell. “Fancy walking out upon a
glacier!”

“Yes, but it is not without a certain element of danger,” remarked Mr.
Gordon Mitchell, who had had a good deal of experience in glacier
work, and who had picked up his ice-axe at the well-known Hôtel du
Lac in Interlaken, where he kept it from year to year. Sibell and her
lover had borrowed axes from the hotel in which they had taken shelter
for the night, and they had been greatly interested in the
strongly-made implements, with their hafts of ash and hatchets of
finest steel, upon which human life so often depends in the Alps.

While they were enjoying the warmth of the fire and chatting with half
a dozen skiers of both sexes who, like themselves, were going on an
expedition in the morning, the smart Swiss hotel manager entered, and,
addressing Mr. Mitchell, whom he knew well as a devotee of winter
sports, said:

“John, the guide, has just telephoned from Gurnigel that he has
unfortunately hurt his ankle while giving a lesson this afternoon.
Somebody ran into him, so he cannot come up in the morning. I propose
to telephone to Amacher and Stutz down in Wengen to come up by the
first train. Both are good guides of the Jungfrau and they know the
glacier well.”

“Excellent!” said Mr. Mitchell. “I’ve had Amacher before, up to the
Guggi Hut and also to the summit of the Breithorn and on other tours.
He’s a first-class fellow. Thanks, if you’ll get them both for us,
I’ll be obliged.”

“Stutz was one of those who climbed with Prince Chichibu of Japan last
season,” said the hotel manager. “The Prince is a wonderful climber,
he says, as well as a good skier. Everyone in the Oberland admired him
when he was in Mürren. A pity he had to leave to return to Japan
under such tragic circumstances.”

“Yes. Everyone knows what a real winter sportsman he is,” remarked the
old Alpinist. And then the conversation turned upon the daring
exploits of the Imperial Japanese Prince in the Bernese Alps.

That night a blizzard raged, one of those blinding snowstorms which
arise in the high mountains so suddenly and abate so rapidly, yet are
so dangerous to those who may be caught in them without shelter. The
railway watchmen on duty, seeing the rapidly increasing drifts,
telephoned down to Lauterbrunnen to set the snow-ploughs at work in
order to keep open communication with the world below. So all night
the electric ploughs were slowly going up and down to keep the road
clear, though it was impossible to keep open that section of a couple
of miles between Scheidegg and the Eiger Gletscher station, where the
tunnel enters the mountain and climbs to the Jungfrau.

Hence, when Sibell--rising early and putting on her mountain kit,
consisting of a waterproof wind-jacket and breeches, thick woollen
stockings and her heavily nailed climbing-boots, which differed in
many respects from those built for ski-ing--appeared below in the
hall, she met Mr. Mitchell, who said:

“The line is blocked, so we’ll have to walk to the glacier. Amacher
and Stutz are here having breakfast, and they are packing their
rucksacks for us.”

Just then Brinsley put in an appearance, and the three went into the
_salle-à-manger_ to a substantial English meal of ham and eggs, which
the popular artist had specially ordered as a preliminary to the day’s
expedition.

Later the two guides joined them in the hall. Amacher, a short,
thick-set man, dark and ill-shaven, with that keen eagle’s look in his
great blue eyes which seems inborn in the mountain guide, approached
and greeted Mr. Mitchell.

“_Grüss Gott_, Herr Mitchell!” he exclaimed, putting out his big,
hard hand. He wore a battered round felt cap with his snow-glare
glasses around the band, and over his shoulder a coiled safety-rope of
best and strongest hemp, while suspended from his wrist was his trusty
ice-axe, that had saved his life in a dozen or so tight corners when
climbing.

“Goin’ across the glacier to-day, eh?” he asked in his kind of
parrot-English. He was one of the bravest guides of that perilous
range, and always acted as director of the search-party of guides who
were ever ready to risk their lives to save those reported missing
upon mountain or glacier.

“Yes, Fritz. We want you to take us on the glacier. My friends here
are anxious to see the crevasses--the deep ones.”

The sturdy, sun-tanned Swiss--brown-faced because of the reflection of
the glaring sun upon the ice--replied:

“All right, Herr Mitchell.” And then he introduced the tall, thin,
wiry man who stood behind him, as Hans Stutz. The guide, proud of the
bronze badge with the white enamelled cross on his chest, which showed
him to be approved and licensed by the Swiss Alpine Club, smiled and
lifted his peaked cap and wished them “Good morning, gentlemen and
lady.”

He, too, had his rope on his shoulder, his well-filled rucksack upon
his back, and his ice-axe ready for the crossing of the treacherous
glacier.

“The weather is none too good,” Fritz mentioned to Hans in
Swiss-German, and Mr. Mitchell, understanding the remark, asked at
once, “Look here, Amacher, is there any danger?”

“Oh, no,” laughed the guide. “If the weather turns bad we can get back
again. We will go by the safe route and show the lady and gentleman
the deep crevasses. There are lots of them just now--after the Föhn.
We’ve got the food in our rucksacks. Shall we go?”

The others assented, for all were ready dressed.

“Walk very slowly, mees, over the snow,” Amacher advised, taking the
girl’s arm. “You have a long way to go and hard walking. Just
easy--easy--so!” And he slowed down and made her walk his pace. “You
see, we are climbing another thousand feet, before we get to the
glacier, and you must not be fatigued before we get there. If you hear
noises, great cracklings, water running far below and look down into
the darkness, don’t get frightened. Hans and I are with you. We know
the glacier from boys.”

“I trust in you,” said the girl, placing her gloved hand upon his
strong arm, while Brinsley was walking with the tall Stutz.

“No danger. Not at all,” Amacher said. “I am guide. Trust me, mees.”

“I do, Amacher,” she said, and they went along up the steep hill,
following the railway lines and passing the kennels of the grey wolf
Uke Arctic dogs kept there, until at last they reached the moraine,
that beach of stones and débris left by the Ice Age, while beyond it
lay an undulating mass of square miles of ice, full of treacherous
ice-bridges across wide and fatal crevasses, yawning chasms from
twenty to three hundred feet deep.

At the edge of the ice they paused. It seemed to them--as it really
was--the roof of the world.

The guides removed their rucksacks from their backs to rest, and
Sibell, at Amacher’s invitation, seated herself on one of them and had
a cigarette her lover offered her.

The sky had changed. From the howling blizzard of early morning the
bad weather had abated, and now the sun shone so brightly in a
cloudless sky that Amacher and Stutz had put down their glare-glasses
over their eyes as precaution, though their charges felt no
inconvenience.

Already it was noon, so it was decided to have a sandwich before
venturing out upon the glacier. Weatherwise, Amacher scanned the
mountains around, and in a low voice remarked in his native
Swiss-German to his fellow-guide: “Bad weather coming, friend Hans.”

“Yes,” replied Stutz. “We won’t go very far. Up to the corner, if it’s
narrow enough to get them over.”

Mr. Mitchell, who understood only very little Swiss-German, for it is
a language which few Englishmen have ever been able to master,
believed it to be a joke between the two guides, for both men laughed.

A few minutes later Amacher uncoiled his rope and began to make
mysterious turns and knots in it as he placed it over Sibell’s
shoulders, naturally thrilling her with the idea of mountaineering in
the high Alps.

Having securely roped her around her waist, and putting a hitch over
her shoulder, he gave her several coils of slack to hold and then
roped her to her lover in the same way, and afterwards to Mr.
Mitchell, while he roped himself to one end of the file, and Stutz
fastened on the other.

“Now,” he said warningly, “be careful. I go first and prick the snow
with my axe. Watch me, all of you, and put your feet exactly in the
steps I have made. Now--off!”

And they went out upon the snow-covered glacier in single file,
Amacher in front picking his way very carefully, fearful of stepping
upon a thin crust of snow concealing some deep crevasse.




 CHAPTER XIX.
 THE DEVIL’S PARADE

At first the way across the undulating virgin snowfield, upon which
here and there showed dark, jagged lines--those terrible fissures in
the ice--looked easy, and Sibell, in her ignorance, wondered why the
dark-spectacled Amacher, with his coil of slack rope in his hand and
bending intent upon his path, should carefully prick the snow with his
axe and feel what seemed always to be firm ground.

She was next to him, about four yards behind, with Brinsley third, and
Mr. Mitchell and Hans following. On every hand she heard from deep
down below the rippling of water, the slow melting of the eternal ice
which ran into the dark, deep-cut valley of the Trummelbach, that
mysterious narrow split in the mountains which leads away through
Lauterbrunnen, where the stream has, through countless ages, fed the
deep lake of Brienz, and which, in due course, through the
fast-flowing Aar, feeds the mighty Rhine across Europe to the Dutch
coast.

The two Alpine guides, their eyes painful because of the constant
sun-glare, presented a goggled appearance as Amacher every now and
then halted, retraced his steps carefully, whereupon the others turned
and went backward until he again struck out at a different angle.

Below, the lovers heard ominous crackings as the ice, ever-shifting
day and night in all the seasons, slowly moved towards the valley, at
one season going down and at the other shrinking and remaining nearly
where it was in the season before.

For nearly two hours they went along, their progress being very slow,
but Fritz Amacher never took undue risks. The safety of those in his
charge was always his first consideration. Dozens of tales were
related in the little cafés in the mountain villages of his courage
and heroism out on the mountains; of his experience with two young
Englishmen in winter when, overtaken by a blizzard, they were
compelled to spend the night under a rock on the other side of the
glacier, and only because he gave them his own rations of food and red
wine, and starved himself, were they able to exist until the dawn.

Gordon Mitchell had heard many stories of his gallant heroism, and how
often he had faced death, while nearly as many stories were told of
Hans Stutz. Indeed, Alpine guides are recognized all over the world as
the finest and most reliable type of Europe.

They had been walking for over two hours, often taking wide turns to
avoid those deep fissures in the ice which yawned to mysterious
darkness.

Sometimes Amacher would hurl a big stone into one of them, when it
could be heard bounding from side to side of the crevasse, long after
it had disappeared into the darkness down hundreds of feet into the
abyss.

Presently he paused and looked around, as though puzzled. They had
wandered upon a spot surrounded on all sides by open fissures, and,
though the guide went to and fro, he could not discover again the
narrow snow-ridge over which they had crossed, and which was evidently
the entrance to what was an impasse.

His keen eye, however, discovered a spot where two big open crevasses
were joined by only a narrow, jagged gap, which was as deep as the
rest, and there remained nothing for it but to descend and cut steps
in the side of the glacier to the narrowest point where they could
swing themselves across.

For him and Stutz it was mere child’s play, but to the inexperienced,
horrifying and perilous.

Gordon Mitchell, as a practised Alpinist, at once realized Amacher’s
intention. At the guide’s order all held the rope taut while he
descended, and, swinging his axe, deftly and quickly cut deep steps in
the ice, sprang across to the opposite side, and then cut two steps,
which enabled him to climb to the opposite edge of the ice-wall.

Planting himself well back, he took up the slack of rope and then
called to Sibell to follow.

“Go slowly, miss,” he cried. “Have your ice-axe ready, and grip the
edge with it, as I did,” he urged. “Very slowly down, and you’ll find
it quite easy,” he cried. “We’ve got hold of you. You can’t fall.”

“Oh, I’m so terrified!” cried the girl breathlessly, for, indeed, the
appearance of that dark, grey-green, yawning abyss open to an unknown
depth was sufficient to strike terror to the heart of any novice.

“Keep cool, dear!” cried Brinsley. “I’m holding you.”

Thus encouraged, the girl turned her face boldly to the descending
wall of ice and, kneeling, drove the head of her axe deeply into the
ice, and slowly lowered herself by its shaft until her foot touched
the step. Then, slowly again, she descended to the next step, and,
without daring to glance into the fatal depths below, she swung
herself across, helped by Amacher’s rope, to the opposite side of the
great fissure, and then clambered up, helping herself with her axe to
scramble to the top.

“There!” she cried triumphantly, waving her axe to her lover. “That
was all right, wasn’t it?”

“Bravo!” cried the old artist. “Most excellent! Very plucky indeed!”

“Now, Brin!” she cried. “It’s your turn. I’ll hold you.”

But Amacher advanced to the rope between her and her lover, saying in
a kindly tone:

“No, miss. You must allow me”; and, taking an expert hitch with the
rope, he leant back and held it taut while the young doctor emulated
the feat of his fiancée.

He managed to descend safely, but in swinging across to the other side
of the crevasse his foot slipped, and next instant he was held
dangling on the rope, held fast in readiness by the guide and Mr.
Mitchell.

Sibell shrieked when she saw his peril, but Alpine ropes are made of
the best hemp, and are as carefully attended to in the guide’s chalet
as is his own bed, therefore there is no danger of snapping under any
sudden strain.

For a few seconds Otway, thoroughly alarmed, of course, and winded by
the sudden strain of the rope upon him, struggled, but quickly he
regained his foothold, and was soon hauled up by the ever-watchful
Amacher.

For a few moments he could not breathe, but the Swiss guide supported
him, took some brandy from his rucksack, and made him swallow it, and
in a few minutes he was all right again.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, as soon as he could gain breath, while Sibell
still held his arm. “I don’t want that experience again! I thought I’d
gone! My foot slipped from the step.”

“Never mind,” laughed Amacher in his cheery way, peering at him
through his dark glasses. “You’re over all right.”

Afterwards the guide shouted across:

“Come on, Herr Mitchell!”

And, taking the rope from the young man, he held it while the
practised climber came nimbly down, crossed, and clambered up to them.
And afterwards the tall Hans swung himself over without the slightest
difficulty.

They soon resumed their way, walking in Indian file as before; Amacher
testing every yard of the way with his axe, now and then halting and
turning to avoid danger, until at last they found themselves upon a
part of the glacier which he knew was free from crevasses, so they
halted, opened their rucksacks, and finished their luncheon, which all
found very welcome, especially the cakes of plain chocolate without
which no Alpine lunch is complete.

Afterwards, the winter sun declining, they set their faces towards the
distant moraine--débris of stones and rock brought down by the
glacier through the ages--to the spot whence they had started,
arriving there just as the pale-rose afterglow began to tint the
high-up snows of the towering Jungfrau.

Before dusk they were back, warming themselves by the welcome log-fire
of the hotel, the lovers thrilled by their first experience upon a
glacier.

“I wouldn’t have missed to-day for worlds!” Sibell declared
enthusiastically, and then, when they were alone, she whispered:
“Brin, when we are married, let us come up here, high above the earth
and far from the haunts of men, for our honeymoon. Think how lovely it
is here, face to face with Nature in a land unspotted by the hand of
man. I love it--every moment of it!”

“Yes, my darling,” he said, kissing her fondly upon her lips.

Suddenly, as he held her in his arms, he felt her shiver.

“I hope you haven’t caught a chill, darling!” he said anxiously.
“You’re cold!”

“No, really I’m not, Brin. I honestly am not. I just shivered. I don’t
know why. That’s all.”

But in her heart she knew why. At that moment of her enthusiasm for
the high Alps a black shadow had fallen across her memory.

Her thought was of that elegant masked cavalier who had disclosed to
her a secret which that cryptic message in _The Times_ had ordered her
to conceal from the man she loved.

There was a plot to part them! Could they ever be parted? Was not her
whole future life bound up in Brin’s? Was he not all in all to her?

Ten minutes later, in the privacy of her little room where she had
gone to change from her mountain clothes, she locked the door, and,
falling upon her knees beside her bed, prayed earnestly for
deliverance from the hand of her unknown enemy.

Next morning Mr. Mitchell, expert skier that he was, took Amacher with
him from the Scheidegg down to Grindelwald, where they had early tea
at Frau Wolter’s, or, rather, the commodious place which once belonged
to the popular old lady, now, alas! dead.

That night he met the lovers at the Hôtel du Lac in Interlaken, the
comforts of which are so well known to every winter-sports visitor to
the Bernese Oberland, and next day they returned to Gurnigel.

Five days later they bade farewell to their friend Mr. Mitchell, and,
the winter sports season being practically over, they travelled to
Milan by the Simplon, and thence by the _train-de-luxe_ which took
them by way of Genoa, San Remo, and Ventimiglia along through the
palms and olives to Cannes.

In Milan they had received a telegram from Sibell’s aunt to say that
she had been unwell with a mild attack of influenza, suggesting that
they should go to the Beau Site until she was well enough to travel
and go into residence at the villa.

They obeyed the injunction, and found the sunshine and brightness of
the Riviera delightful, but even on the first day after their arrival
Sibell declared that the high Alps, with their wonderful germ-free
atmosphere, were far more congenial than the gaiety, the
artificiality, the gambling, and the vice of the much-vaunted Côte
d’Azur.

It was true that she met several people she knew in that fine hotel
which is the rendezvous of the best tennis-players in the world, but
somehow she never seemed to have Brin to herself as she had had him in
Gurnigel, amid those marvellous and romantic forest walks and
extensive ski-ing fields.

To Brinsley Otway the reckless life of the Riviera was a novelty,
hence she constituted herself his guide. Carnival was in full swing in
Nice, so twice they went over, once to the famous ball, and once to
the first Battle of Flowers, and on both occasions they had a most
hilarious time.

Then she took him several times to Monte Carlo, where she initiated
him into the intricacies of roulette and _trente-et-quarante_. Both
risked modest stakes, of course, but neither won. Therefore, beyond
sight of the crowds in the stuffy, unventilated rooms, the Casino did
not appeal very much to either of them.

One Sunday morning, having left Cannes for Monte Carlo early, they
took their cocktails in front of the Café de Paris, and afterwards
went for an idle stroll in the sunshine along the world-famed
Terraces.

It was eleven o’clock, the hour of the Sunday parade, and Sibell was
dressed as smartly as any. All types were there--the newly rich in
great plebeian force, swindlers, rogues, peers, and flappers, some
women half bare and others wrapped in furs--not because it was cold,
but the furs were expensive and must be exhibited--a multicolored
stream which below showed a continuous flicker of light stockings and
shoes, and above a struggling crowd of gaudy sunshades. From flappers
in sky-blue to painted Jezebels of every age to eighty; from typical
French artists in broad-brimmed hats, flowing cravats, and peg-top
trousers, to staid English business men, members of Parliament, and
prosperous share swindlers; from athletic young English girls with
complexions that required no rouge, to dozens of overdressed,
bejewelled women of all ages and all nationalities, whose names were
notorious all over Europe, all were chatting together, rubbing
shoulders, and enjoying the brilliant sunshine.

“This, I should take it, is the most cosmopolitan and best-dressed
crowd in the world,” remarked Otway as three laughing young French
girls, Parisiennes of the ultra-modern type, pushed past him in the
crowd.

“Most interesting, aren’t they?” she agreed.

At that moment a well-dressed man in grey passed them, walking with a
self-absorbed look, his hands behind his back and taking notice of no
one. Yet, if the truth were known, he was the great François Lebeau,
one of the most famous of European police officials, and his presence
there denoted that observation was being kept upon some rogue or
criminal lured there by the strange fascination the place always
exercises over evil-doers.

Too intent in conversation were the lovers to notice that, as the man
in grey passed by, he lifted his dark eyes with a momentary glance of
inquiry, and then lowered them again.

On one side of that processional way, where vice flaunts on every
Sabbath from eleven till half-an-hour past noon, rose a bank of palms,
shrubs, and cacti, with masses of red and yellow blossoms, scented
heliotropes, mimosa, and festoons of climbing geraniums, with the
wonderful façade of the Casino rising high above, while on the other,
beyond the white balustrade, lay, deep down, the azure sea, calm and
unruffled, with the big white steam-yachts and a giant pleasure-liner
lying at anchor in the little territorial waters of His Highness
Prince Rouge-et-Noir.

Sibell and Brinsley were, that sunny morning, childishly happy in
their own perfect love, yet had the girl but known the identity of a
stranger who, having encountered them, seemed to have suddenly become
interested, she would have surely again reflected upon that strange
warning uttered by her masked cavalier.

The man who passed and repassed them closely several times was short
of stature, with soft white hair, dressed in black, with a grey felt
hat, and wore a heavy gold watch-chain. His appearance was that of a
scholar, perhaps a bookworm, but something of a dandy. He carried a
malacca cane, and from his neck wore a horn-rimmed monocle suspended
by a rather broad black ribbon. Patent leather shoes, white spats, and
yellow gloves completed his dress.

Had the caretaker at the Guest House at Hampton Court been alive, he
would have instantly identified him as the mysterious Mr. Bettinson,
the man who had uttered those strange incantations in the house of
evil.




 CHAPTER XX.
 THE SHADOW

François Lebeau, the apathetic man in grey, stepped into a powerful
limousine at the end of the long range of flower-beds in front of the
Casino, and gave orders to the chauffeur to drive with all speed to
Nice.

Prior to doing this he gave a secret signal, by blowing his nose, to a
slim, dark-haired young man who had also been following him along the
Terrace. The man, who was one of his most astute assistants, realized
his orders, and obeyed by dropping back into obscurity in the crowd.

Along the winding Corniche, in a cloud of white dust, the powerful
police-car sped with its shrieking horn with the green disc which the
chauffeur had suddenly put up by means of a switch, a sign to the
police patrols to allow it to proceed at whatever pace.

Meanwhile Lebeau removed his hat, revealing his domed bald head which
he was always at such trouble to conceal. As chief inspector of the
Paris Sûreté he was one of the most famous detectives of modern
France. As a young man he had worked as a humble police-agent of the
Eighth Arrondissement under the great Goron, and afterwards under
Harnard, and now he was chief of the department of surveillance upon
the person of the President of the Republic, and any notable
foreigners, princes or others, who came to France.

Whenever the Prince of Wales put his foot upon French soil, for
example, Monsieur Lebeau was always near him as his personal
protector.

He sat in the corner of the roomy car as it whirled through Beaulieu,
with its wealth of flowers, handsome villas, and big hotels facing the
blue bay, and thought deeply.

It was indeed a strange, unheard-of mystery which, related on many
sheets of pale-yellow official paper, had been placed upon his table
at the headquarters of the Sûreté in Paris.

The translation in French was from the report of the Metropolitan
Police in London, and the story so attracted him that he had taken it
home on the night of its arrival and thoroughly examined every point
it contained. Indeed, as he went along, he selected a tiny key from a
bunch upon his watch-chain, opened a small, cupboard-like recess in
the upholstery before him, and from some files of papers there he took
out the copy of the reports from London.

As the car approached Villefranche he became once more absorbed in the
story, one so amazing and incredible that even he, practised
police-agent that he was, felt half inclined to dismiss it as a mere
fantasy, a chimera of somebody’s imagination.

Yet the Criminal Investigation Department of London never made a
report without careful and thorough investigation, and, though the
local subdivision of police at Hampton were unaware of it, the famous
council of the C.I.D. were bent upon investigating and probing the
strange secret of the long-closed Guest House.

As the car entered Nice, the chauffeur pressed a button and the green
disc disappeared, while the car, to all appearances a private one,
pulled up beside the chief post office, and its occupant alighted and
walked to the Préfecture of Police, so as to pass unnoticed by those
in the street.

He ran alertly up the stone stairs to the first floor, and, passing
through an anteroom, the door of which was guarded by a detective, who
saluted him, entered the private room of the Sous-Préfet.

Taking up the telephone, he asked in sharp, quick tones for
conversation with Monsieur Feydit at the Sûreté in Paris.

Then, while awaiting the connection, he sat down and began to write
rapidly a long report in an almost copper-plate and microscopic hand.
The through express from Nice to Calais and London would leave at
half-past two, and he was anxious that his message should reach
Scotland Yard on the following evening. Hence his frantic hurry, for
if he caught the train his message would be at Victoria soon after
five o’clock on the following day.

Time was pressing. He glanced at the clock, and his pen flew rapidly
over the paper. The inquiry was doubtless one of highest importance,
or he would not have taken it up personally.

He had finished it and sealed it with black wax in a large blue
envelope, when the telephone bell rang sharply.

“Hulloa! Monsieur Feydit, is that you?” he asked in French, in clear,
calm tones.

Then, receiving an answer in the affirmative, he went on:

“Please listen, and take down the following.”

And from a slip of paper upon which he had pencilled them, he read off
about fifteen words of the French police telegraphic code, all of
which were repeated over the wire back from Paris.

“_Très bien!_” said Lebeau. “And listen further. On the train
Nice-Paris-Calais reaching the Gare de Lyon at 8.40 to-morrow morning,
there will be an urgent train-letter for London. Get it from the
controller, and send Richaud through to London with it. He will await
a reply and leave London again the same night. Advise me here of the
reply by code.”

“I understand, monsieur,” came his trusty assistant’s voice across
France, and then the famous detective hung up the receiver.

Afterwards he rang a bell, and, handing the sealed letter to the clerk
who entered, gave him instructions to hand it to the controller of the
Paris express.

Then, replacing the file of yellow papers in his pocket, he sauntered
in the sunshine round to the Hôtel Negresco, where he was staying as
Monsieur Ducret, _rentier_ of Lyons, and ate a lonely and belated
_déjeuner_.

Meanwhile the lovers had lunched at the gay Café de Paris, and
Brinsley had paid a bill that was amazing for the omelette and
cutlets, with _petits-pois_, which they had. The big, garish
restaurant was crowded and noisy, as it is every day during the
season, filled to overflowing with that same mixed throng which had,
an hour before, disported itself along the Terrace in the sunshine.

Crooks and millionaires sat laughing and eating with cocottes and
innocent flappers, while English peeresses drank vintage wines paid
for by fat, uncouth food profiteers of Smithfield or Mincing Lane--for
there is only one god at Monte Carlo year in and year out, and that
god is Mammon.

So loud was the laughter, and so hilarious became a party at the table
next to them, that conversation was rendered impossible. Two young
Englishmen of the superior, military type were lunching with two
over-dressed women twenty years their senior, and when the wine-card
was presented to them, it became instantly obvious that the elder of
the women, a painted old hag of seventy, was paying for their meal.
But such sights are common at Monte--old women of fortune, imagining
themselves still young, paying for the pleasures of any handsome young
fellow they may meet at the tables.

The luncheons of to-day are but the aftermath of chance meetings in
the Rooms on the previous night, for by a discreet loan of five louis
a man often makes a female friend in a social circle to which he could
never aspire otherwise.

Yes, the world Rouge-et-Noir is indeed a wonderful, mysterious world,
which certainly opened the eyes of the upright, steady-going young
doctor who plodded at his increasing practice in Golder’s Green.

Amid that crowd of gamblers and adventuresses, honest men and rogues,
women of the _haut-monde_ and the _demi-monde_, _escrocs_ and
respectable folk, they remained in ignorance of the presence of that
unobtrusive little old man in black with the white hair, who had
passed and repassed them several times on the Devil’s Parade.

Seated alone at a table in the corner, not far from them, he had
ordered his lunch with careful selection, a meal which the
_maître-d’hôtel_ admired, for it showed the unusual discriminations
of one well-versed in good food.

The old man at once became immersed in an English newspaper which he
had brought with him, and apparently took no notice of anyone. Yet a
careful observer would have noticed that ever and anon he cast furtive
glances at the happy young pair, and that in his eyes shone a
peculiar, evil glint.

That same expression in his eyes had showed when, in the big,
moth-eaten drawing-room at the Guest House, poor Farmer had discovered
him uttering those weird incantations, that same expression when he
had plainly told the ex-policeman that he felt sympathy for him
because he was doomed to die.

Little did the old man who had given his name as Bettinson dream that
he had that morning been watched by one of the greatest criminal
investigators in Europe. But, even had he known it, perhaps he would
have laughed. He was a man who had never taken life seriously,
regarding it always as a huge comedy, just as, at the moment, he
regarded Sibell Dare’s affection for the young doctor as a mere
passing fancy. Before that day he had never set eyes upon either of
them, but now he sat close by, watching them in secret, and inwardly
laughing in triumph.

At two o’clock Sibell and her well-set-up lover, whose health, after
his strange attack, had been much improved by the fresh mountain air
of Switzerland, had their coffee and cigarettes under one of the sun
umbrellas at the café opposite, and, after a stroll to inspect the
shops, wandered into the Casino.

Already the Rooms were overcrowded, for it was the height of the
season, and people stood three and four deep around the
roulette-tables, the novices of both sexes putting on wild stakes
impossible to win, while the old gamblers stayed their hands, and now
and then won a coup. The same crowd was there as in the Hôtel de
Paris and on the parade--that hectic, overdressed scum of the world
and the half-world, sadists and soubrettes, effeminates and _escrocs_,
moralists and _marcheurs_, with well-dressed thieves of both sexes and
all nationalities.

At the end table on the left--the one which for years was known as
“The Suicides’ Table”--Brinsley Otway put a louis on _zéro-trois_ and
won, much to the surprise of them both.

Then he played on the first dozen and lost, and again lost on the
_rouge_. But he won on the last dozen and _en plein_ on twenty-two,
which satisfied him for the day.

Through it all the little man in black watched the pair narrowly.

Once only he played, throwing ten louis carelessly upon the red, and
won the even chance.

This fact attracted Sibell’s attention, but, unaware of his identity
with the mysterious Mr. Bettinson, for whom the police were in such
active search, she took no further notice of the odd-looking little
old gentleman.

Careful not to be seen again by the mistress of the Guest House, he
travelled by the same train as they took back to Cannes, and,
alighting at Nice, he entered a taxi, which took him down to the
Negresco, where he passed a rather handsome bald-headed man in a
snuff-colored suit who was idly smoking an excellent cigar, sipping an
_apéritif_, and watching the gay crowd entering and leaving the
afternoon dance.

Without glancing at the old man, Lebeau allowed him to pass, and then,
rising leisurely, strolled towards the concierge’s desk.

The latter handed the little man in black a small registered packet,
for which he signed in the name of “George Peterson,” and then,
entering the lift, was whirled up to the third floor.

Next moment, at signal from Lebeau, the porter passed to him the book
wherein the visitor had signed his name.


The ruse was a good one to obtain a specimen signature, for he took
the book to a side-room, and there compared Mr. Peterson’s autograph
with one he had on a letter which he took from his pocket-book.

A moment afterwards he put the letter away, and, with a smile of
satisfaction, returned the book to the concierge.

The signatures were identical.




 CHAPTER XXI.
 THE GREEN BAIZE APRON

Sibell and Brinsley had been at the Beau Site at Cannes for about a
fortnight, daily awaiting the arrival of Lady Wyndcliffe.

Happy in each other’s ecstatic affection, they went for long walks
each day in the beautiful countryside at the back of the gay resort.
Now and then they would hire a car and go for a day’s excursion up to
Grasse, with its sweet-smelling fields of flowers grown for the
perfume factory, or to one or other of the rock villages which lay in
the higher lands between Cannes and Nice, those quaint, old-world
places where at the local café one can obtain such delicious
luncheons eaten outdoors in the winter sunshine.

“I begin to dread returning to Golder’s Green after this delightful
time,” the young doctor said one bright, cloudless morning as they
were walking arm in arm through the groves of grey, twisted olives a
couple of miles or so from the town.

“But why should you go back to Golder’s Green, Brin?” asked the
sweet-faced girl with some surprise. “When you are my husband I shall
surely have enough for both of us.”

“I know that, darling,” he said. “But--well, I’m not the sort of
fellow to exist without working. I couldn’t do it. My profession
interests me, and gives me a zest in life. Not that your presence
doesn’t do that,” he hastily explained, with a laugh. “But I know you
understand my meaning. I must work for myself. I could never live in
idleness on your money.”

“Of course I understand, Brin,” she said, squeezing his arm
affectionately. “But I really don’t see why you should return to that
dull, suburban spot again. Couldn’t you sell the practice, and buy one
in some pleasant seaside town?”

“Yes, I might, of course, darling. But you forget that, under the
terms of the will, you are compelled to live at the Guest House.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed disappointedly. “I had forgotten that.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about it of late,” he said. “I feel that it
is dangerous for you to live in that place. Some spirit of evil exists
there. My own attack, after going through those books, is quite
unaccountable, and then the mystery of the caretaker Farmer’s death,
after the incantations of a stranger, is most inexplicable.”

“Yes,” said the girl. “Sometimes I think that all the weird stories
about the old place are just legendary or gossip, and yet at others I
see the dire results to those who scoff at them.”

“But the most mysterious fact of all is, that no woman entering there
has ever felt any ill effect,” he remarked.

“I wonder how that is accounted for?” she asked, as they strolled
slowly up a narrow path, where from between the olives they looked
down upon the wide expanse of sapphire sea.

“Who knows, darling?” he asked. “This strange inheritance of yours
seems to be overshadowed by some tangle of mystery--grim tragedy and
death.”

“A pity they cannot find that old man Bettinson,” said the girl, smart
in her brown sports kit, with a neat little brown felt hat, and
carrying a comity stick with a steel spike in it. She was typically
English, a lithe open-air girl fond of every sport ever since she had
been at school, a graceful dancer, and a fine rider, as all the women
of the D’Aires had been.

“Perhaps they may discover the old fellow one day,” remarked Otway.
“But of course the police and coroner’s jury appear inclined to the
opinion that the whole scene was a chimera of the dying man’s
imagination. Personally I know of no human condition in which death
can be brought about by a verbal curse. We hear of such things
happening in the Middle Ages, and some people, even in our own
enlightened age, are sufficiently superstitious to believe in the
efficacy of an execration.”

“Then you think that the caretaker simply died of natural causes?”
asked his fiancée eagerly.

“I believe that the verdict at the inquest must have been a true one.
All sorts of fantastic tales are told by neurotic people at inquests.”

“But don’t you agree that a good many verdicts recorded of death from
natural causes are untrue ones?” she asked.

“My opinion is the same as that of most men in my profession, that
murder is very easily committed, and frequently goes undetected, and
hence unpunished. Further,” he said, “I have an increasing dread of
the evil influence which seems to spread like a pall upon any male who
enters that accursed house in which you are compelled to live.”

“Really, Brin, you are making me feel quite terrified. I heard from
Mr. Gray yesterday that the first day of the sale is to-morrow. He
enclosed a catalogue. I’ll show it to you when we get back.”

“The sooner the place is cleared of all the old stuff the better,”
Otway declared. “I’ll be glad to see the decorators in and the place
refurnished for you and fit to live in, and of course half the dealers
in England will be there. Mr. Gray told me that very big prices would,
no doubt, be obtained for some of the furniture and tapestries. There
are two authentic relics of Cardinal Wolsey which will certainly bring
big money.”

“How much it all brings does not matter to me, Brin,” she said,
halting in the shadows beneath the trees and looking earnestly into
her lover’s face, while he bent and kissed her fondly.

“My only thought, darling, is of your own safety in that weird house,”
her lover said.

“Why?” she laughed. “Have you not only a few minutes ago told me that
no woman suffers there?”

“Yes. That’s one of the greatest problems,” he replied.

Throughout the whole morning they wandered, until they joined a long,
white road which wound up the mountainside among the pines and ilexes,
until at last they came to a small, remote village perched upon the
edge of a high, precipitous rock, one of those villages which long ago
were so often ravaged and burned by the Barbary pirates.

In the narrow, cobbled street they discovered a modest little
café-restaurant, in which a buxom “madame” was bustling about serving
her customers. Therefore they entered, and sitting down to clean
napery, a bottle of white wine, and fresh sections of yard-long bread,
they ordered the _plât-du-jour_, and enjoyed an excellent meal.

That afternoon, on re-entering the hotel, Otway obtained their letters
and handed one to Sibell.

She recognised Lady Wyndcliffe’s sprawly handwriting, and after
reading it, exclaimed in dismay:

“Auntie Etta has left Southampton to-day for New York. Uncle is ill
and telegraphed for her.”

“Then she isn’t coming here at all?”

“No. She says we’d better return as soon as we like. Isn’t it really
too bad? She doesn’t say what uncle is suffering from. But he is
evidently very ill--or she wouldn’t cross the Atlantic. She’s always
told me she is a terribly bad sailor.”

“Well, darling, it is her duty, isn’t it?” Brinsley remarked. “I
suppose we shall have to leave very soon.”

“And I’ll have to return to Cookham, while you go to Golder’s Green,”
she said, with a deep sigh of regret. “We won’t go till next week,
eh?”

“When you wish it, darling,” he said; and, after washing their hands,
they returned to the big lounge for tea.


Next day proved dry and fine at Hampton Court, and long before noon
the trams and trains discharged hundreds of passengers bent upon
attending the important sale at the Guest House.

Long before noon the premises overflowed with the curious and those
eager for bargains, for an auction sale of such genuine antiques
seldom took place in the vicinity of London. Every class of dealer and
amateur collector was represented, from Whitechapel, from Bond Street,
from every metropolitan district came men and many women with their
pockets full of Treasury notes ready for a bargain, whether a pitcher
or a picture, a water-can or a whatnot, a saucepan or a sideboard.

Through the rooms the crowd surged, and the auctioneer’s men had
considerable difficulty in preventing small articles from being
purloined, for those loungers with big overcoats and stout women with
big pockets, all ready to grab any unconsidered trifle, were there in
full force, as they always are at crowded auctions.

Outside upon the roughly-cut lawn, which had not yet had time to get
into condition after the clearance of thirty years of growth upon it,
a number of heavy pieces of furniture and a miscellaneous collection
of household goods from the ground floor had been placed, each
numbered, while behind stood a rostrum upon which, punctually at noon,
Mr. Gray mounted, mallet in hand.

Below sat his two clerks, while four men in green baize aprons bustled
about among the throng.

Mr. Gray, in a dark-blue overcoat and bowler hat, cleared his throat,
and, looking smilingly around at the mass of faces turned towards him,
recognized many well-known dealers, some of whom were the most
reliable and reputed in their profession.

He cleared his throat, and made a little introductory speech, in which
he referred to the unique opportunity of acquiring many very fine,
unrestored pieces of antique furniture and objects of art which had
been in that historic house ever since the days of King Henry the
Eighth and the great Cardinal Wolsey.

“Some of this furniture was, no doubt, brought across here from the
Palace of Hampton Court yonder, to furnish this house as a Guest House
for friends of the Cardinal,” he went on. “Therefore, gentlemen, I
tell you frankly that I shall not be content with paltry prices. On
some of the pieces there is naturally a reserve, and some of them will
be able to be acquired by private tender afterwards. The majority of
these unique lots are, however, open for your purchase, but I would
implore you not to start your bidding at ridiculous figures, as it
will only hamper us all and waste our valuable time. With that
request, gentlemen, I propose to proceed with the sale.”

After he paused, he called to his foreman.

“Greening! Lot number one! Jacobean fire-back of Surrey iron, with the
arms of the Overtons of Godalming Hall. One of the Overtons married a
Miss D’Aire in 1796. How much?”

“A pound!” shouted a man at the rear.

Thirty shillings was instantly bid in two places. Then two pounds,
which was increased quickly to five. At that figure the bidding ceased
until somebody cried “Guineas!” And at a nod from a well-known dealer
in close proximity, the auctioneer cried:

“Five pound ten is bid for the Jacobean fire-back! Any advance? Come,
gentlemen!”

“Six!” sounded from somewhere, followed by “Guineas,” and then
“Six-ten.”

By slow degrees Mr. Gray’s persuasive powers had effect, until ten
guineas was reached.

“Going at ten guineas! Going! Gone!” And the mallet fell sharply upon
the table, as he added, “Ten guineas--Mr. Sheldon.”

The next lot was a small oak gate-table in splendid condition, of
Queen Anne period. Such an article, when genuine and unrestored, is
always eagerly sought by dealers, as there is a ready sale for them
among collectors. There are thousands of imitations and facsimiles,
complete with wormholes and every sign of long usage, but specimen
pieces like the one exhibited by the man in the baize apron are few
and far between.

The bidding started at two guineas, and quickly rose to twenty. On
every side the competition became keen. To the ordinary eye it was
only a little table such as could be purchased for a pound or two at
any furnishing establishment in the Tottenham Court Road, but to the
shrewd, hard-headed crowd of bargain-hunters assembled in that garden
it was a perfect little gem.

As such, it was eventually knocked down to a famous West End dealer
for forty-two pounds ten.

A fine old oak refectory table with big, bulbous legs and a foot-rail
worn by the sandals of the monks of centuries ago, which had stood in
the big stone hall, was next brought forward, a heavy piece which took
six men to move it. It was capable of seating quite twenty people.

“This table, no doubt, came from the suppressed monastery at
Chiddingfold in Surrey,” said Mr. Gray. “The monastery was dismantled
and destroyed by Thomas Cromwell. At one end of the table you will
find carved the sign of the cross, with the word ‘Chyddyngforde’ and
the initials ‘A de B’--Alfred de Beson, who was abbot there in 1496.
Now, gentlemen, what shall we say for this unique and historic piece?
Such a table does not appear in the market every day, as all of us
know. Shall we start at two hundred guineas?”

And with a persuasive smile, Mr. Gray glanced around him, mallet in
hand.

Suddenly he recognised a nod, and said in his quick, business-like
manner:

“Two hundred and twenty pounds. Thank you, sir! Two hundred and twenty
is bid for this historic piece!”

Another pause.

“Two hundred and thirty in two places!
Two-forty!--fifty!--sixty!--seventy!--eighty!--ninety!--three hundred.
Three hundred--thank you, sir!” And, after another pause, he went on:
“Now, gentlemen, we’re not here for amusement, and we’ve a lot to get
through this afternoon! Who will give three hundred and ten?”

“Ten!” came a shout. Then, from another quarter, “Fifteen,” followed
by bids of “Twenty” and by five pounds the competition, mostly between
the Bond Street fraternity, rose till three hundred and eighty-five
pounds was bid.

“Any further bid?” asked the auctioneer. “Three-eighty-five?”

And he sipped his glass of water in order to allow the competitors
time to reflect.

“Dirt cheap, gentlemen,” he cried. “You, all of you know its true
value. May I say three-ninety, Mr. Deeping?” he asked, addressing a
well-known dealer, who usually bought for America.

Mr. Deeping gave a nod in the affirmative.

“Three-ninety!” shouted Mr. Gray. “Any advance! Four hundred, Mr.
Steen?” he inquired of the head of one of the greatest Bond Street
galleries.

A nod from the stout, well-dressed man who stood smoking a cigar, and
then Mr. Deeping and Mr. Steen began to bid against each other until,
after a fierce fight which became highly exciting, Mr. Deeping secured
it for five hundred and twenty-three pounds.

At the moment the hammer dropped sudden shouts were heard, and a great
commotion took place in the back of the crowd, close to the flight of
steps which led to the front door.

Mr. Gray stood in surprise, angry at the sudden interruption.

Next second, however, the attention of the crowd was diverted to the
scene of the disturbance, and all turned away from the rostrum to
discover what was the trouble which had so unexpectedly arisen.




 CHAPTER XXII.
 UNDER THE HAMMER

Some few minutes elapsed before Mr. Gray, descending from the
platform, furious at such sudden interruption of his business, was
able to gather vaguely from excited persons what had occurred.

The throng were passing around the steps, so that he, in charge of the
auction, could not get near.

Of a sudden, an excited man, tall, thin-faced, and wearing a faded
blue rain-coat, a type of low-class dealer seen at every auction all
over the country, rushed up to him, saying:

“Ain’t it terrible, Mr. Gray?”

“What’s happened?” asked the auctioneer, who was so well-known and
popular in that riverside district.

“Why, a poor little chap--a telegraph boy! ’E fell down the steps, and
they say ’e’s dead!”

“Fell down? What? Stumbled?”

“They say ’e came ’ere with a wire for somebody named Long, a chap
from Birmingham. Somebody saw Mr. Long go into the ’ouse, and, hearing
the lad shout the name, sent him inside. He found him, and as he went
out to get his bike, which ’e left at the steps, he fell down, and
they say he’s dead!”

Mr. Gray stood staggered at the story. And well he might, recollecting
his own strange experience, followed by that of Doctor Otway and the
death of Farmer the caretaker.

The unconscious lad was quickly carried up the steps into the
dining-room by willing hands, and soon a doctor was present.

“He’s still alive,” the medical man declared. “But he’s suffering from
some violent shock, I think.”

Meanwhile the police were warned by telephone, and in a car belonging
to a West End dealer the poor lad was hurried away to the Richmond
Hospital.

Fully half-an-hour elapsed before calm reigned among the crowd of
buyers.

The incident was discussed by everyone. Some of those present
remembered what had appeared in the papers concerning the long-closed
house and the evil upon it, and began to talk of curses and of the bad
luck which might follow those who bought any of its contents. They
were members of what is known in auction circles as “the knock-out”--a
ring of dealers who were there to rope in all they could get at lowest
prices, by not bidding against each other, one of the most insidious
and dishonest forms of purchasing.

This reached Mr. Gray’s ears, and when order was at length restored,
by a telephone message from the hospital, which announced that the lad
was simply in an epileptic fit and would recover, he again mounted the
rostrum.

“Gentlemen!” he cried, striking the table with his mallet, “the
interruption upon our day’s proceedings has been a most unfortunate
occurrence--the more unfortunate because a certain ring of
ill-disposed people have circulated an utterly fantastic story that
upon the contents of these premises there exists an evil influence--a
curse it has been called. This is a further illustration of the low
depths to which our friends of the ‘knock-out’ will descend. I put it
to you, gentlemen, is this not hitting us all, myself included,
beneath the belt? I am open, as the majority of you here are, for a
fair and honest deal. We are all out to make a margin of profit for
ourselves--myself included. The more commission I get, the happier I
shall be!”

Whereat a great laugh resounded through the garden, and a man’s voice
cried: “Good old Gray! You’re one of us!”

“I am,” declared the auctioneer, laughing, and putting everyone in a
good temper. “So don’t let us waste any further time, gentlemen. Let’s
get to business.”

The next lot was a Charles the Second day-bed, cane-bottomed with
spindle legs, in preservation so perfect that it might have been made
but forty years ago. All specimens have the canes damaged or holed,
but in this case it was flawless.

“Now, gentlemen! How much for this perfect specimen?--a museum piece.
Nobody here has ever set eyes upon any day-bed as fine as this. We’re
not dealing with Curtain Road stuff to-day, gentlemen, but museum
pieces. What shall I say for this magnificent specimen? Two hundred
and fifty guineas?”

A little, grey-faced old man in the front of the crowd nodded in
assent. He had not bid before, and the crowd of dealers, looking
eagerly at him, saw he was not of them--an amateur, no doubt.

Another voice instantly cried “Two-sixty!”

“Two hundred and sixty guineas I am offered for this lot!” cried Mr.
Gray. “Come, gentlemen,” he said in his ordinary voice. “The figure is
ridiculous. Please don’t let us stay here all the afternoon. Three
hundred pounds is offered. Three hundred! Any advance?”

“Guineas!” said the little old stranger in a high-pitched, squeaky
voice, as he glanced round apprehensively to see if anyone was about
to outbid him.

“Three fifty pounds!” came good-humoredly from a well-known Kensington
firm of antique dealers.

“Three-sixty,” added the diminutive old stranger.

“Seventy,” replied the man from Kensington.

“Four hundred pounds,” said the little old man quite calmly.

“Four-ten,” was bid by the other.

“Fifteen!” exclaimed somebody at the back, whereupon the manager of a
well-known firm in Wigmore Street, perhaps one of the greatest dealers
in first-class antiques, whispered to a friend:

“Not worth more than that!”

To which his fellow dealer agreed.

“Twenty!” exclaimed the old amateur.

“Four hundred and twenty pounds for this perfect Charles the Second
day-bed!” cried the man with the hammer. “Four-twenty-five!
Four-twenty-five? Now, Mr. Lewis,” he went on, looking at the
Kensington dealer. “Four-twenty-five. A unique piece you must
acknowledge!”

The dealer from Kensington nodded.

“Four-twenty-five is offered sir,” exclaimed the auctioneer, fixing
his eyes upon the little old man.

But the latter shook his head, and when the hammer fell his shiny face
relaxed into a triumphant smile, for he had never had any intention
whatever of buying it, and had simply run up the price out of mere
devilry.

The auction proceeded, but the old gentleman, who was evidently a
person of discretion and knowledge, elbowed his way into the house and
went upstairs from room to room, examining the contents of each
apartment--which would occupy three days in the selling--with critical
eyes.

Presently, in descending, he passed for the second time into the long,
old drawing-room where the faint wintry light came through the dingy,
old, glass windows.

He was alone. For the moment the crowd were all eagerly excited at the
sale below.

Glancing apprehensively around, he suddenly clenched his hands, and,
raising his face to the ceiling, began to utter some words in
gibberish that was quite unintelligible. “The great mystery,” “the
strife of Lucifer,” “the all-powerful King,” “the Evil which is Ruler
of the Universe,” “the Death God of the Humans!” and such-like
expressions were all that were distinguishable.

In those few minutes his breath came and went in short, hard gasps as
he lifted his skinny hands and grasped the air in his excitement and
fervor.

In language which was cryptic and unintelligible he seemed to be
invoking evil upon the place, though no one was present to see him.

Two women suddenly entered that room in which Mr. Gray had been
attacked upon the reopening of the disused house, when suddenly the
stranger ceased his imprecations, and, pretending to closely examine
one of the pictures, a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, he strolled
out and down the wide stairs. On returning to the crowd he found a set
of ancient wrought iron fire-dogs being put up, but evinced no
interest in them. For a quarter of an hour he idled about the grounds,
and then left to stroll back to the station.

As he ambled along, absorbed apparently in his own thoughts, he took
no notice of a tall, rather thickly-built man of middle age who had
been present at the sale, and who, like himself, was on his way to the
station to take the next train back to London. The pair arrived at the
station almost at the same moment and passed the ticket collector one
behind the other. The elder man entered a first-class carriage, but
the other went third, yet on arrival at Waterloo about half-past four,
the younger man watched the other’s movements closely, and, when he
entered a taxi, the other followed him across Waterloo Bridge in
another cab.

It was a case of cat-and-mouse, for the elder man who had made such a
close bid for the Carolean day-bed was none other than the promenader
at Monte Carlo, in whose movements François Lebeau had been so deeply
interested, while the man who had travelled up to London was Albert
Ashe, the ex-butler of the Countess of Wyndcliffe!




 CHAPTER XXIII.
 OUR SINISTER WORLD

Soon after ten o’clock that night Mr. Ashe called at the Grosvenor
Hotel, and, inquiring for Mrs. Wilcox, was at once shown up to Etta’s
sitting-room.

The handsome woman, in a pale-mauve and silver dinner-frock, was
reclining upon a couch near the fire reading the evening paper.

“I’ve seen some of the prices fetched at the sale,” were her first
words as her ex-butler entered.

“Yes, fairly high, eh?” he said. “But how did you get on with Rupert?”

“Rotten,” she replied, suddenly raising herself and taking a cigarette
from the onyx box beside her.

“What do you mean?” asked the man, who did not take off his overcoat,
but cast himself into a chair after helping himself to a drink from
the decanter on the sideboard. “Why rotten?”

“I really can’t tell you, my dear Albert, but I’ve one of my psychic
feelings that all is not running as we expected it. There’s some grit
in the wheels of the machine somewhere.”

“H’m! You’re nervy! That’s evident! You women are so damned
unreliable, and you rat when it comes to a real pinch,” he growled,
lighting a cigarette which he took from her box.

“I’m not nervy at all, you fool! Only I have an intuition that things
don’t go as they should, and they won’t.”

“Funnily enough, as a matter of fact, I’ve the same notion, my dear
girl.”

Then he told her of the incident of the telegraph boy’s sudden seizure
at the Guest House and the sensation it had caused.

“The paper says nothing about it.”

“I suppose a mere boy who has a fit doesn’t matter to the papers. But
there you are--another remarkable and inexplicable circumstance. I’m
getting the wind up, I don’t mind telling you!”

“What! that you’ll also be stricken down?” laughed Etta, flicking her
cigarette-ash into the fire and glancing up at him with those magnetic
eyes of hers. “You’re a bit of a coward, my dear Albert, after all!”

“I’m not. But how are we going to put these turtledoves apart? That’s
what I want to know, and that’s what concerns us both,” said the
adventurer who had played so many parts successfully on both sides of
the Atlantic. “If we don’t act very soon, and with a strong and
relentless hand, then the wedding-bells at St. Margaret’s will be
playing a requiem to all our hopes and happy aspirations. Oh, it is
all too fearful for words! What does old Gordon Routh say?”

“Gordon! He’s a complete wash-out! A fine old sportsman across the
tables, I admit, but a white-livered old fossil when there is anything
really serious doing,” replied the adventuress, with whom so many
men--and girls, too--had had bitter reason to regret acquaintanceship.

Bearing the name of one of England’s oldest earldoms, she had not so
long ago been a bedecked decoy of the supergang of trans-Atlantic
card-sharpers, blackmailers, and confidence tricksters, and yet only a
year before in London she had presented two girls at Court and held
three big balls at Claridge’s. How strange our everyday world has now
become--our world where honest folk of both sexes are elbowed out by
food profiteers, _escrocs_, and adventuresses.

Truly our octopus London is increasingly amazing. Its greedy struggle
for Press notoriety at so much a paragraph is astounding, while its
open immorality is fast approaching that of the ancient orgies of
Rome. Yet nobody cares.

The seasons come and go, “Little” and “High,” in which innocent girls
of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, are ever sacrificed
upon the altar of Mammon--with perhaps a big car thrown in. The
invention of the motor-car introduced a new medium for immorality, for
the young man’s car is usually a bird-cage, while the rich old man
cages his young bird in its beautifully upholstered interior.

The schemers sat silent, smoking, and looking into the glowing fire.

It was upon the tip of Ashe’s tongue to mention having seen that
mysterious man of execrations who had given the name of Bettinson.
Being a wise person, he resolved to keep his knowledge to himself.

From without, in the rainy night came the noise of taxis and throbbing
motor-buses in the station square, that racket and shouting which is
always consequent upon railway arrivals and departures.

The comfortable Grosvenor, the jumping-off place for the Continent,
patronized by worldly London and the provinces, is a place where, in
the hall, everyone of note meets everyone else of note going to and
fro to the ends of the earth. The square hall, in which laughter is
rife all day and hot tears are shed morning and evening, is the common
meeting-ground for those journeying eastward, whether to Paris, India,
or Japan.

Ashe glanced at the green marble timepiece and rose. He was uneasy and
did not concentrate.

“Going so soon?” Etta asked. “Why? I’m alone. Do remain and keep me
company.”

“No, my dear Etta. I’m awfully sorry, but I have a special
appointment,” replied the man. “When you’ve seen Rupert again let me
know at once. Have you heard from Wyndcliffe?”

“I had a letter last night from Boston. He’s on some wild-goose
financial scheme, as usual. It seems that somebody named Schendel is
buying up all the candy stores in the States, and wants Wyndcliffe to
be chairman of the company. A big swindle, I expect, like that Stream
Line Motors, of Detroit. Personally, I don’t trust any of those
financial propositions. I like to see cash down on the table,” she
said.

Then, tapping her cigarette, in its long tortoise-shell holder, she
looked up at him with half-closed, alluring eyes, and laughed.

“I agree, Etta, dollar bills or treasury notes are far better than
being left by these share-pushers to nurse the baby.”

“Oh! Let’s discuss the future,” she said impatiently.

“Well, what about it?” Ashe asked.

The pretty woman shrugged her shapely shoulders.

“You haven’t rid yourself of your incubus yet,” he said, regarding
her.

“Oh, that ass, Rupert! I don’t know really what to do.”

“You surely do. I’ve told you what to do a hundred times, my dear
girl.”

“No! Not that!” she cried frantically, with a look of horror on her
face. “Not that!”

“Well, you want to discuss the future,” the broad-shouldered man went
on. “As far as I can see, we are both completely in the cart with our
assets each hour slipping away from us. Think of to-day’s
sale--thousands of pounds profit which ought to be ours. And they
haven’t yet touched the really good things--tapestries or pictures.”

“I agree, my dear Albert. It’s all rotten and very disappointing.”

“You’ve only yourself to blame, Etta. You haven’t yet got rid of
Rupert, and also you’ve let the turtledoves coo too long.”

The woman stirred uneasily from her couch, and, tearing her
cigarette-end out of its holder, flung it viciously into the fire.

“Give me a drink,” she said, and obediently he crossed and mixed one,
afterwards watching her as she drank it.

“We must have money, Albert,” she said, after taking a good gulp of
her brandy-and-soda.

“Certainly we must,” replied the man. “You’ve never been squeamish in
the old days, eh?” And he laughed lightly. “You’re a really wonderful
woman, Etta, when you put your fine wits to work.”

“Bah! Don’t flatter me,” she replied in a hard, determined voice. “Let
us both face the music and just discern a way out,” she went on. “If
Sibell died, then all the estate would go to Gordon Routh and----”

“And old Gordon would chuck it all away at Monte in a single season,”
Ashe interrupted.

“Agreed. But supposing nothing happened to Sibell--except what might
possibly occur in that accursed old house of hers, and there one never
knows what might take place--and she married Gussie Gretton? What
then?”

“Easy as melting ice,” laughed Ashe. “Gussie is the biggest rotter I
know, immensely rich, for his father made hundreds of thousands with
his chain of cheap tailors’ shops--reach-me-down, ready-for-service
shoddy suits sold at big profits. His headquarters was a
brilliantly-lit shop in the Whitechapel Road, where he began life in a
back room, a Pole whose name was Grabov. His son, who has washed his
hands of all sartorial dealings, is a wealthy and eligible bachelor, a
member of the Bachelors’ and White’s, with a flat in Park Lane.”

“I only wish I could see them marry,” exclaimed Etta wholeheartedly.

“We’d have twenty thousand to divide at the very least. Perhaps more.
I’d try and push up a bit more of course. Gussie is awfully keen on
her, as we both know.”

“Then let’s make another effort, and try to do it,” said the woman.

“You can, my dear Etta, but I can’t. Use all your woman’s wits and
your influence to get Otway back to his beloved practice once and for
all. Get old Gordon into our swim, as there’s certainly something for
him out of it, My great, God-fearing aunt! Fancy letting a cool ten
thousand slip through one’s fingers. It’s really criminal!”

“Quite so. But I want to put a serious question to you, Albert,” said
the woman, rising to her feet and facing him earnestly. “Have you any
idea--or even any suspicion--of the basis of that extraordinary evil
which asserts itself at the Guest House? To what can it be due? Now,
tell me the truth, for we are both afloat on the same tide, and I
admit I’m mystified.”

“I tell you the honest truth,” replied the man who was her associate.
“I am just as mystified as you are. I can’t see any solution of the
problem. Why should that poor telegraph boy fall down in a fit to-day,
for example? The whole affair is most amazing, astounding, and
uncanny. You see, even Otway was taken ill, yet no woman has ever been
affected! That to me is the most puzzling point in the whole weird
affair.”

“If women were affected, then perhaps Sibell might--well, feel its
sinister influence,” the woman said after a pause. “The caretaker died
after the incantations of that mysterious old stranger, who is
apparently the unknown evil genius of the place.”

“I confess that it’s all beyond me,” Ashe declared. “I’m not usually
nervy, as you well know. But I admit that I shouldn’t like to enter
that accursed house. I’m a bit too sinful perhaps”; and he grinned.

“Nor should I,” laughed Etta grimly, while the man drained his glass
and announced that he really must go.

“Look here, Etta,” he added, taking up his hat and buttoning his black
evening overcoat. “At all hazards get rid of Rupert. Send him back,
bury him, do whatever you like with him. But while he’s here a danger
exists every moment--the danger of him finding out that you’re
Wyndcliffe’s wife. It isn’t a savory theme, is it?”

“And you’re going to leave me to face everything, eh?” she cried
suddenly, her eyes flashing.

“Not at all, my dear girl. I’m going to work at once in our mutual
interests as I’ve always done. You are an English peeress, and I’m
only your abusive butler. Funny, isn’t it? How the people in the
States would laugh if they knew how you and I have pulled the legs of
exclusive London Society, and you at Court too!” And he added: “Well,
good-night, Etta, dear. We’ve always been pals, and we always will
remain so”; and then, suddenly taking her slim, white hand, he bent
over it with a studied courtesy and kissed it.

“Good-night, Mrs. Wilcox,” he said, laughing. “But do get a move on
and in the direction we are agreed. Get the lovers back and play chess
with them--as you’ve done before”; and he went out.


Otway and Sibell had delayed their return to London for a week, for he
had arranged with his locumtenens to carry on until the date of his
arrival back at Golder’s Green. To both it was a great disappointment
that Lord Wyndcliffe’s beautiful villa was not to be reopened that
season. On several occasions they had been up to it, and had taken tea
upon the great, broad terrace, with its climbing flowers and gorgeous
views of the green Estrelles and the ever-changing Mediterranean,
sometimes sapphire-colored, sometimes grey, or at other times the deep
color of lapis lazuli. The two old French servants, husband and wife,
had served them with tea, and in the gardens they had picked the
orange-blossoms--emblem of marriage--and the violets, daffodils, and
yellow mimosa to carry back to the hotel. Life for them was certainly
one of exquisite bliss, their hearts beating ever in unison, and their
own little world confined to their own whims and pleasures of the
moment.

One day, having been over to the Municipal Casino at Nice to an
afternoon dance, Sibell, on her return in the evening, suddenly
discovered that she had lost a little chain-bracelet set with
turquoises, a birthday present from her mother in her school-days.

Next morning Brinsley left to go back to Nice to try and recover it
from the lost-property office at the Casino; when, on descending into
the lounge, Sibell met a girl she instantly recognised, Marigold
Ibbetson, one of her old schoolfellows at Cheltenham College, whom she
had not seen for three years.

Their meeting was cordial, and they took their _petit déjeuner_
together.

“I’ve been here over a week,” laughed the auburn-haired, rather
good-looking girl. “Auntie is not very well to-day, and she’s not
coming down till luncheon. I thought it was you, but only last night I
asked the concierge your name, and he told me. Well, and how has the
world been treating you, old girl?”

“Oh, not so badly. I’ve been travelling a lot,” Sibell replied. “My
aunt, Lady Wyndcliffe, who has a villa here, was to meet me, but she
hasn’t turned up--gone to America instead.”

“Meet you, eh?” laughed the slim, well-dressed girl. “You mean both of
you--you and your fiancé?”

“How did you know?” inquired the girl quickly.

They had just left the hotel and were out in the flower-garden.

“Because I’ve watched you, and it is obvious. I congratulate you,
Sibell. Who is he?”

Her friend told her, speaking enthusiastically as may be well
imagined. And as they walked down the gravelled drive to the road,
they were joined by a tall, long-limbed, plain girl, to whom Sibell
was introduced. Her name was Moyna Lascelles, who had been at
Cheltenham after Sibell had left.

As they took a pleasant stroll along the Croisette together, Moyna
suddenly turned to Sibell and congratulated her upon her engagement to
Brinsley Otway.

“As a matter of fact, I know Brinsley quite well,” the girl said.
“When he was at the Hospital School he was an intimate friend of my
brother Fred, and very often he spent week-ends with us at Thames
Ditton. But please don’t say a word, because of a very tragic
circumstance. Promise me you won’t, eh?”

“Yes, I’ll promise of course,” Sibell said.

“Well, one evening he took out to a dance at a riverside hotel a girl
named Peterson, who lived opposite in a house-boat with her parents,
who were music-hall artistes. On the way back the boat capsized, and
the poor girl was drowned. He swam to save her, but the current proved
too strong, and he narrowly escaped with his own life.”

“He has never told me that,” Sibell said.

“Perhaps not,” laughed the girl. “That’s why Brinsley is such a good
fellow. My pal Jack Cranston, the cross-channel air-pilot, who is here
with my mother, is his friend, and he tells me what a fine fellow he
is. I hear he’s a good dancer too.”

Sibell only smiled at hearing such laudation of her fiancé. It
comforted and gratified her, as it certainly would any girl whose
lover was her ideal. And what girl of any class exists who has no
ideal of a gallant and strong lover who will hold her in his arms and
fight for her until death?

Men may be deceivers ever, but a woman’s heart, once won, is the great
and incomparable gem which crowns human life, true and unbending in
adversity or prosperity until the parting by death.

Alas! that men are so egotistical, so self-confident, that they so
frequently leave women to weep over the burden of their overbearance,
and their illogical misunderstanding of woman’s heart.




 CHAPTER XXIV.
 UNKNOWN!

Brinsley Otway had for a week or two had his eyes upon a beautiful
square-cut diamond and emerald ring in platinum--a single diamond, set
with a very fine, well-matched emerald on either side--which was shown
in the window of that expensive jeweller’s in the Galerie Charles X at
Monte Carlo. It had been sold by one of the Hapsburg princesses, who
had, like many, been temporarily embarrassed at the tables, so the
jeweller said, and, after considerable bargaining, Brinsley bought it,
and on his return, presented it to his fiancée.

It fitted perfectly on her finger, and she was beside herself with
delight, and kissed him fondly, time after time, for his beautiful
present, intended as a birthday gift, for her anniversary would be in
about a week’s time.

Next day turned out grey and damp, with a slight drizzle, one of the
days all know on the Riviera. Otway went out for exercise about eleven
o’clock, leaving Sibell to write letters, when suddenly he encountered
the tall, thin-faced air-pilot Jack Cranston, whom he knew during the
war, at the ill-fated aerodrome at Dunkirk.

“Hulloa, Otway,” he cried merrily. “Fancy! After all this time! Only
yesterday I heard you were here through my friend Miss Ibbetson.”

“Really!” replied Brinsley. “She is an old schoolfellow of my fiancée
whom you know, I think. They were at Cheltenham College together.”

“Marigold is a great friend of Moyna Lascelles. I’m staying here with
her mother, who is a distant relation of mine. She has a villa out on
the road to Nice.”

Then, as they walked together towards the Casino, Cranston suddenly
turned, and said:

“Look here, Brinsley, excuse me for asking the question, but is it
true that you’re engaged to Sibell Dare?”

“Of course I am,” replied the other in considerable surprise at his
tone of voice. “I thought everybody knew that!”

“Oh, I see,” exclaimed the other. “But of course I mean no offence.
Understand that!”

“Why should I take offence?” asked the young doctor, facing him
inquiringly.

“Nothing, my dear old fellow, nothing. I’m sorry I mentioned it,
that’s all. Forgive me, I’m a fool.”

“Why should you regret? I thought everyone knew it. The announcement
was in the papers weeks ago.”

“I’ve been abroad for months, my dear old chap, so I haven’t seen it,”
replied his friend quite honestly.

“Come over into the bar yonder”; and Brinsley indicated the Casino.
“Let’s have a drink and talk it over,” he suggested.

“I’d really rather not, old man,” was the other’s reply. “What I may
say might only give you pain. And, further, it’s really none of my
business what girl you marry, is it, now?”

“Well, I should think not, all things considered.”

“Then why should we discuss the matter? Let’s talk of something else.
Do!”

“No, we won’t, Cranston,” said Otway insistently. “You’ll just come in
and have a drink with me and tell me what’s at the back of your mind.
Now is it about that infernal house of old Henry the Eighth’s time at
Hampton Court that people are discussing?”

The keen-faced cross-channel pilot laughed heartily.

“Oh, my dear Brinsley, of course not. You surely don’t believe in
curses, do you? I don’t.”

“No. Who does? There seems, however, to have been a lot of uncanny
happenings there,” his friend replied. “I myself had a very curious
attack after spending some hours in the old place. Indeed, I nearly
lost my life over it.”

And then he went on to explain the mysterious circumstances which
occurred after his visit to the Guest House to inspect those old books
in the long-shut-up library.

At last Cranston, induced by Otway, went through the spacious hall of
the Casino, and entered the bar, where they both sat at a little table
in the corner to smoke and gossip. The usual crowd of Riviera idlers
of all ages who assemble each morning were already there, but amid the
chatter, laughter, and discussions over the previous night’s play in
the Rooms their conversation could not be overheard.

“Now, tell me frankly, my dear Jack,” said Otway at last, leaning both
elbows upon the little table and looking straight into his friend’s
eyes. “Why are you so devilish mysterious about Sibell?”

“I’m not mysterious, my dear old chap--not at all,” declared the
other. “I’m not going to interfere in the least in anything that
doesn’t concern me. Forgive me, won’t you?”

“It isn’t the point of interference. Are we not friends, you and I?”

“I--well, I think so.”

“Then why don’t you speak out to me as a friend, as man to man? What
are you concealing?”

“Nothing,” was the other’s reply.

“You swear that!” cried Otway, half rising, his face strong and
intent.

Cranston wavered for only a second, and then excused himself, saying:

“Really, I didn’t come in here to be subjected to any inquisition! I
must refuse.”

“My dear Cranston, I’m no inquisitor--only your good friend. Yet I
demand to know why you are so reticent about Sibell. I noticed that
curl of your lip, that glance of sarcasm when you mentioned her name.
Now, if you are a real pal, as you pretend to be, out with it! What do
you know? If you are not a pal--a false friend--then remain silent.
And that’s the end.”

The pair sat facing each other for a full minute. Cranston felt
himself cornered, as indeed he was.

“Well, Otway,” he said at last, speaking very slowly, “I really don’t
know how to reply to you. I only know that to-day you are one of the
happiest men in all the world--a charming girl, who is to be your
wife, with so much money that you will never want to work another
single day in all your life. Would not a million men like to be in
your shoes?”

“Yes, I suppose they would,” replied his friend.

“I run lots of engaged couples and honeymooners over from Croydon to
Le Bourget almost daily and I see a lot--I can assure you. We pilots
see funny things very often, for our passengers are closely associated
with us, especially if there’s any element of danger over the sea.
Girls get the wind up terribly sometimes, and I’ve seen brave men turn
pale when things are not going quite to my liking.”

“But how does that concern me?” asked Otway. “You seem somehow to be
warning me! Tell me if you are, now, straight out.”

For a few moments Jack Cranston remained silent. Then, fixing his
keen, hawk-like blue eyes upon his friend, he said:

“Yes. I’ll speak frankly and damn the consequences, Brinsley. I am
warning you!”

“Of what?” the other gasped, staring at him.

“Of the girl you are about to marry. You’re trusting her far too
implicitly.”

“What the devil do you mean?” asked the lover, rising quickly in
fierce resentment. “Say that again!”

“I repeat it,” the air-pilot answered quite calmly.

“What do you say against Sibell, eh?”

“Merely that she’s not quite so true to you as she pretends, that’s
all! I’m sorry to utter those words, Brinsley, but you’ve forced me to
do so.”

“Then you mean that she’s playing me false?” he said in a hard, hoarse
voice.

“That’s my meaning. But I regret if my words hurt you. I know they do,
old chap. But I leave you to discover the truth. That’s all.”

“It’s a damned lie!” cried Otway, striking the table with his fist and
causing the others in the bar to look round.

“That is for you alone to discover, my dear Brinsley,” exclaimed his
friend, still calmly. “If it is a lie then everyone believes it.
That’s why they pity you, good, honest pal that you are, they pity you
that you should be made sport of by that girl and her suave gentleman
friend.”

“Who is the man?” demanded Otway fiercely. “Give me his name!”

“Are you really certain that you want it? Would it not be far the best
way for you to set watch, and to discover for yourself? Believe me, my
dear old Otway, that’s by far the best course. If I told you, then you
would only say that I’m his enemy, or that I am prejudiced.”

“But I demand his name!” cried the unhappy lover vehemently.

Again a silence fell between them.

“Ask others. They will tell you. I refuse to say more,” said the
airman.

“By God! I’ll drag the name out of you,” cried the distracted man in
fury.

“No heroics, my dear fellow. Remain calm, and just watch. That’s my
advice!” responded the keen-faced man, who on more than one occasion
had lain in a shallow dug-out with yellow water trickling in, and
braved the daily bombings of the Huns upon Dunkirk, those days when
the German airmen absolutely wiped our stores and our planes out of
existence.

“But can’t you give me any clue? For God’s sake, Cranston--at least do
that!”

“I’d tell you his name, but surely you realize how painful it would be
for me; how unfair it would be to give away a friend--just as you
are.”

“Is he a man whom she has lately met--or one she has known a long
time? Tell me that,” he asked in all eagerness, as may well be
imagined. At one blow, all the poor fellow’s illusions as to Sibell’s
all-absorbing love had been converted into a dark cloud of suspicion.
And yet, he now asked himself the real reason--as well he might.

“I really can’t answer that question. I’m sorry,” was Cranston’s
reply. “Just watch--that’s all I suggest.”

“Then you refuse to reveal the scoundrel’s name? He’s a friend of
yours. That you admit, eh?”

“Not much of a friend, really. Only that I have once met him. My
standpoint is that I refuse to be regarded as one who has any axe to
grind, Otway. I simply tell you what I know, what many people gossip
about, and suggest that you make independent inquiries for your own
satisfaction. That’s all”; and he rose from the table, adding: “I’m
going. I would never have said all these painful things had I not been
really forced to do so.”

“And even now you refuse to give me the slightest hint as to this
secret rival of mine!” cried Otway in fury.

“I have already explained the reason. Investigate for yourself
and--well, forget that we met this morning. I’m leaving for Paris by
the _rapide_ at three-thirty, for I’m on duty again at the aerodrome
to cross in the morning. Why don’t you come for a flip over with me
one day?”

“I may when all this is cleared up, Cranston,” he replied. “But I tell
you now frankly that I don’t believe it!”

The aviator shrugged his shoulders, and replied:

“I expected so. That’s exactly why I refuse to mention the name.”

And together they walked outside in silence, when, with estrangement,
they parted.

On his way back to the Beau Site, passing the gay home-going
tennis-playing crowd, Brinsley Otway walked with his eyes upon the
ground, deep in thought. The seeds of deep suspicion had been sown,
but, man-of-the-world that he was, he tried to steel himself not to
believe them.

In any case his war-time friend had not substantiated anything. He had
spoken through his hat, as it were, he reflected. Yet, why? What
ulterior motive could Cranston have to warn him that Sibell was
playing him false?

For a full hour he walked along the Croisette, and to ease his mind
and pass the time, he went into a little café and called for an
_apéritif_ in order to think it all over.

He reflected upon the past. His first chance meeting with Sibell, who
had come so entirely and wholeheartedly into his life to console and
become his other self--a woman who, in her ideals, in her aspirations,
in her religious beliefs, and in her quality of soul, he found to be
heights above any other girl he had ever met--his own affinity.

Yet, when poison of the mind is sown, it sweeps into an
ever-increasing flood, to raise a tide that will overwhelm even the
level-headed, and to swirl against the rocks of truth.

And where can one find truth, save in the bottom of the deepest well?

The man or woman who dares to tell the truth to-day deserves a statue
as an heroic example. The ever-ready lie is to be found in every
household, be it the cottage or the castle, whether at Sydenham or
Sydney, Mayfair or Manitoba, and I leave the reader to complete the
geographical survey.

If the woman of Mayfair is “peevy” and yet religious, she tells her
butler that she is “not at home.” And that deliberate lie goes down
through all the classes, even to the grey-haired wives of Church of
England country parsons themselves.

And yet, is not the lie forbidden to the Christian? And if lies are
told daily, even by those chosen to administer in religion, why should
anyone hold the lie in abhorrence? We are a wonderful people. The
village parson, with his tea upon his knees, will say in his best
Oxford drawl:

“Oh, I’m sorry. But I never eat cakes!” And only because the cakes in
question are underdone and hence do not appeal to his digestion.

A man who is now a Bishop of the Church of England once, in his early
days, before his election to the House of Lords, was open enough to
wire to his would-be hostess, a well-known peeress:


 “Regret quite impossible. Lie follows by post.”


In such a mood, thinking out all the past, and contemplating the
future, Brinsley re-entered the gay hotel, and, finding Sibell
chatting in the lounge with her old school-friend Marigold, to whom
she introduced him, he sat down beside them and ordered three
cocktails.

As a real man-of-the-world, and a true lover, he tried to crush down
those fierce feelings which had arisen within him in consequence of
his friend’s warning, while Sibell, glancing at him, thought that her
ideal lover had never appeared to be so charming.




 CHAPTER XXV.
 THE DOWNWARD STEP

The Myrtles at Cookham was, after all, a dull, damp place in March,
with the mists hanging all day over the Thames, the trees leafless,
the garden pretty in summer of course, but leaf-strewn, with rough
lawn and weedy paths, in winter. After the gaiety of Cannes it was to
Sibell terribly depressing.

With her Aunt Etta supposed to be away in America with her husband,
and Brinsley back at his practice in Golder’s Green, she led a life of
daily boredom, listening to old Gordon Routh’s many complaints, as to
both depleted finance and his failing health.

Worn-out gamester that he was, he sat every evening over the wood-fire
in the cottage sitting-room asking questions about the Rooms at Monte,
the play, and the nightly sensation of high stakes and great losses,
for the Administration of the Society of Sea-baths always take their
lion’s share.

“Yes,” he said one stormy evening while the wind howled round the old
house, and the rain beat heavily about the windows, “Monte Carlo can’t
be the same as when Prince Albert ruled it. Nowadays Monaco has fallen
into the hands of the big speculators. First Zaharoff and his friends,
and now speculating friends of theirs. No! It can’t be the same. The
rich Russians who lived on the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, and who
were the real players, are no longer there. They get no big coups as I
knew them in the ’nineties, when Saturday nights were nights indeed.”

“You had your fling there, according to all accounts!” the girl
laughed, looking up from the evening paper, warming her shapely feet
upon the fender.

“I did. Then I got something for my money, in any case. To-day they
seem in the public rooms to play what, in the old days, we might class
as shove-ha’penny in any of our village pubs. Of course, I suppose
stakes run a bit higher in the Cercle Privé!”

“They do,” said the girl, and for the next half-hour she described to
him the Monte Carlo as it is to-day.

Every evening it was the same terrible boredom. By day the girl took
long tramps alone over those wet, dismal roads up and down the
lonesome hills, or else sat and wrote long letters to Brinsley. Then
at evening she sat over the fire to gossip with the old hunchback, who
always deplored his own bad luck at _trente-et-quarante_.

So bored did she become that one day, with old Routh’s permission, she
wrote to Moyna Lascelles, who lived near Birmingham, to come and spend
the week-end with her.

Since that day at Cannes the two girls had become firm friends, and
since Sibell’s return, they had met twice in town and lunched
together. So, in order to further cement their friendship, Sibell sent
the invitation, which was at once accepted, old Gordon Routh
expressing delight that Sibell should have found such a congenial
companion.

The Guest House had meanwhile been cleared of its contents, and the
decorators were hard at work cleaning, repainting, and papering the
interior, planing and polishing the oaken floors, putting in fittings
for electric cooking and light, new baths, central heating, and every
modern labor-saving contrivance; while outside, the builders were at
work removing the overgrowth of ivy from the red bricks, which they
scraped and repointed. They reconditioned both lead-work and tiles on
the roof, and the woodwork of window-sashes and doors.

Ten thousand pounds had already been placed to Sibell’s credit at the
bank by the lawyers, therefore all went merrily, and, thanks to the
girl’s generosity, old Gordon Routh found himself free from household
expenses and certain little debts he had contracted in that pretty
riparian village.

Brinsley’s habit was to ring her up each night at nine o’clock, after
he came in from his heavy day’s work, before he sat down to his lonely
evening meal. One night the bell went at half-past seven, just as they
were sitting down to dinner.

Sibell rushed to the ’phone, only to hear bad news. Brinsley’s widowed
mother, who lived outside Carlisle, had been taken suddenly ill, and
he had been telegraphed for.

“I’ve managed to arrange for my absence with a chap I know named
Lancaster, who is coming here to-night,” he said. “He was with me at
the hospital, and it’s awfully fortunate that I could get hold of him.
So I’m leaving Euston late to-night, darling. I’ll let you know by
wire to-morrow.”

“But, my darling Brin, how sudden! I expected you would meet Moyna
with me at the Trocadero for lunch to-morrow. We’re both horribly
disappointed. But, of course, I realize how very worried you must be,
dearest. I do hope you’ll find your mother better. Wire me in the
morning, won’t you?”

“Of course, darling. I’m so sorry I cannot lunch with you, for I, too,
was so looking forward to seeing you. But there you are! It can’t be
helped,” he said.

And then, after some comforting words, her fiancé wished her
good-night, and the conversation ended.

On returning to the little dining-room, she related what Otway had
told her, but, in her ignorance, she never realized the strange look
which overspread Moyna’s countenance.

“How very unfortunate!” she exclaimed. “We’ll postpone our trip to
town till he’s back.”

And in that way the question was settled.

“What a glorious ring yours is!” remarked Moyna, when the two girls
were seated beside the fire after dinner. “By Jove! it must have cost
an awful lot,” she added, taking her friend’s hand and admiring it. “I
wish I had one like it!”

“I expect it cost a good sum,” Sibell replied. “It’s a real good
birthday gift, isn’t it?”

At breakfast next morning old Gordon Routh received a business letter
which necessitated his presence for a couple of days in London, and at
his suggestion, the two girls accompanied him, arriving at the Hotel
Cecil just after tea.

Gordon Routh’s habit had been to stay there through many years;
indeed, ever since that colossal hotel on the Embankment had been
opened. Routh took his own favorite room on the fourth floor, while
the girls had two rooms on the floor beneath.

After taking tea together in the great palm court, the old man rose,
expressing regret that he would have to leave for his appointment.

“I don’t expect I’ll see you again to-night, girls, for no doubt I’ll
be late. I’m not dressing for dinner. You’ll be able to amuse
yourselves--go to a cinema or something, eh?”

And then he left them seated to watch the dancing.

“What shall we do?” asked Sibell of her friend. “How about a theatre?
We can dine as early as we like, and so on. What would you like to
see?”

After some discussion, they decided to go to the Haymarket, and Sibell
obtained tickets at the box-office agency in the hotel. Afterwards
they went upstairs, dressed leisurely, and about seven o’clock
descended to the great grill-room for dinner. Sibell looked extremely
charming--as, indeed, she always did--in a dainty frock of one of the
new shades of green which she had had made for Gurnigel, while her
rather saucy-faced girl friend was in black.

At table their conversation turned upon women’s charm. Sibell declared
that, while the cult of beauty through the media of face-powders,
lip-sticks, and massage has attracted notice, the effect of emotions
and temperament as a connecting-link in its development had been
entirely overlooked.

They were sitting at one of the side-tables in the long windows which
by day overlook the busy Embankment and the Thames, but, now that the
blinds were drawn, the spot was warm and cozy, being out of the
hearing of the many other diners.

“I agree with you, my dear, to a certain extent,” replied her
new-found friend. “Of course the first asset of good looks is good
health. I’ve a pretty fair constitution, but I certainly haven’t any
good looks. So I can’t help it”; and she laughed.

“But don’t you think that everyone’s character is reflected in one’s
face, both in men and women?” Sibell asked. “However good a face may
be in form or feature, it is chiefly the expression of it that
attracts or repels. One’s face is surely the mirror of one’s mind,
hence no beautiful character can be ugly in expression.”

“And yet one must not forget that old adage that beauty is but skin
deep,” Moyna remarked, as she finished her filleted sole and raised
her glass of Chablis.

“I hardly agree with that,” Sibell declared. “Gloomy faces always
reflect gloomy minds, and disappointment shows its indelible mark in
our wrinkles, which are an indication of a despondent outlook.”

“You seem uncommonly philosophical to-night,” laughed her friend,
toying with her glass.

“Well, perhaps I am. Only I’ve been thinking over it all to-day.”

“Depressed because Brinsley is not with us, eh, Sibell?”

“Not exactly. I’m only thinking that fear, grief, and worry are
depressing and must impair the digestion and deplete the vitality.”

“Well, my dear, you’ve nothing to worry about, lucky girl that you
are!” exclaimed the other. “Your happy outlook should help all your
mental and physical ills. For indeed joy is the greatest tonic and
beautifier, and you should surely have enough of it--with a big
fortune at your disposal and a handsome lover into the bargain!”

Scarcely had she uttered those words, than both girls, at the same
moment, became conscious of a tall man in evening dress standing
smiling before them.

“Well, Sibell!” he exclaimed cheerily. “I can hardly believe my eyes!
Is it really you?”

The girl addressed looked up in surprise, and instantly recognized the
broad-shouldered, good-humored man who held out his hand so frankly.

“How are you?” she asked in amazement, taking his proffered hand.

“Quite all right, my dear Sibell. I was sitting over yonder, and
chanced to see you here. I thought you were on the Riviera with your
aunt.”

“I’ve been there, but, as you see, I’m back again.” Then, glancing
towards her companion, she asked: “May I introduce you to an old
friend of mine, Mr. Gretton?”

The girl smiled as the man bowed, and then he asked if he might have a
chair at their table, adding: “I’ve finished, and I’m just off. What
are you doing?”

“Going to the Haymarket,” Sibell replied.

“I’m at a loose end. Can’t I come with you?” he asked. “As a matter of
fact, I’m staying here.”

“So are we,” said Moyna. “I’ve never been here before, but it seems to
be Mr. Routh’s pet haunt.”

“I’m often here,” he laughed. “I’ve let my rooms in St. James’s
because I’ve been across to New York on business, so I’m pushed out
here till next week-end.”

“Auntie is over in America. Lord Wyndcliffe is ill, and she’s joined
him,” Sibell said.

“So you’re back at Cookham again, I suppose,” laughed the middle-aged,
rather good-looking man, who was so well known about town as an
eligible bachelor. “I saw your aunt at Lady Deepdene’s a few weeks
ago, but she told me nothing about Wyndcliffe’s illness.”

“You really don’t want to go to the Haymarket, do you?” asked Sibell,
wishing in her heart to get rid of him.

“I do. Really I do! I’ve wanted to see the piece. If I may come, I’ll
be delighted. I’ll run up and get a seat before it’s too late.”

Then, hardly ere the girl had given her permission, he was on his
feet, striding out of the restaurant.

“An awfully nice man!” Moyna remarked.

“Yes,” replied Sibell. “But he’s a bit of an ass--one of those who
think that every woman is in love with him.”

“H’m. That’s the conclusion I’ve already formed. But, after all, he’ll
be company for us to-night, won’t he?”

And she produced her long tortoise-shell cigarette-tube and began to
smoke.

Gussie Gretton soon returned, his face wreathed in smiles. He had
secured a stall in the same row as theirs, and, after he had given
them coffee and liqueurs in the lounge, he took them in a taxi to the
theatre. He was, of course, compelled to sit apart from them, but when
he rejoined them at the fall of the curtain, he suggested:

“Now what about a spot of supper and a dance, Sibell? That is, of
course, if you don’t think Otway would object. I’ve never met him, but
I hear he’s a real good sort.”

The girls looked at each other in indecision, which he saw at once.

“Come to the Florida. It’s always cheery there. There’s a glass floor,
and good food. Come along, girls.”

“Shall we?” asked Moyna. “I’d love it! Do come, Sibell.”

And so, having got their wraps, they drove round to Bruton Mews to
taste the delights of one of the most exclusive dance clubs in London.

Gussie Gretton, being one of the club’s chief supporters, was at once
received by a dapper little _sous-maître d’hôtel_, who was none
other than Giovanni Savini, the friend of Albert Ashe. He piloted the
trio to a cozy walled-off corner, where a table was set for four, with
softly shaded lights, spotless napery, and a big central bowl of
Emperor daffodils.

Already a few couples were dancing upon the glass floor to one of the
best orchestras in London.

The evergreen and dandified Gussie, having nodded acquaintance with a
bald-headed old earl who was supping with one of the principal and
most daring dancers in a Parisian revue, at once ordered cocktails,
and then examined the menu with the eye of the gourmet.

He ordered a delicious little meal with the inner knowledge of one
well versed in London life, a meal which he knew would well suit the
palates of his two charming guests. And hardly had he ordered it than
he invited Sibell to dance.

She could scarcely refuse, because they were old friends. Gussie was
one of her Aunt Etta’s pets, who went to and fro at her bidding. Yet,
be it said, he had never known of her trans-Atlantic past, nor did
Sibell, innocent girl that she was.

Her only thought that night was of her lover Brinsley and his terrible
worry beside his mother’s bed. She had waited, but heard nothing from
him, yet she still hoped that on her return to the Cecil she would
receive a wire.

All three ate a merry supper together. Gussie was in his best form,
telling them risqué stories of scandals in London Society and of the
world of New York from which he had just returned.

“But, I say, Sibell,” he said suddenly, “what is that all concerning
the house that you and Otway are to be doomed to live in? There’s been
an awful lot about it in the papers.” And he placed another strong
cocktail before her.

“I know nothing except what I hear. As far as I can ascertain, it
seems to be all bunkum!” was her honest reply.

“Of course it is, my dear Sibell!” he laughed, raising his glass to
her. “Here’s the best of luck to you.”

Clean-living and abstemious girl that she was, the cocktails she had
taken were sadly muddling her, though she did not realize it.
Insidious drinks did not affect Moyna, for she was used to them, but
in the ordinary way a single glass of port always caused Sibell’s head
to reel.

Suddenly, just as he had invited her to dance a foxtrot, he
ejaculated:

“Oh, what a lovely ring you have there! A present from Otway, I’ll
wager, eh? Do let me see it! I love gems--and especially emeralds. Do
take it off.”

She did as he suggested, and under the shaded light he ran it to and
fro before his eyes, admiring its multicolored flashes, for the three
gems were certainly perfect specimens.

“I’d love to examine it again after the dance. May I?” he asked. “I’m
mad on emeralds, as you know,” and, so saying, he slipped the ring
into his waistcoat pocket and they both passed out upon the glass
floor to dance, Sibell’s brain being awhirl because of the potent
cocktails.




 CHAPTER XXVI.
 BEFORE THE DAWN

Gretton and Sibell returned to their table, whereon Moyna was
leaning her shapely bare arms and smoking through her long
cigarette-tube, watching them lazily.

Sibell, unsteady in movement, her brain muddled by the insidious
drinks to which she was unused, sank upon the red silken settee and
sighed deeply.

“I feel horribly tired,” she murmured, passing her hand wearily across
her white brow and disarranging her evenly cut fringe of fair hair
that so well became her.

“It’s awfully close in this place,” Moyna declared sympathetically. “I
can’t think why it is that at any dance club they seem to be afraid of
a little ventilation--not draughts, but a little fresh air.”

“I’m so very sorry, Sibell,” declared the tall, well-groomed man,
bending over the girl whom he so greatly admired, and had hoped,
before the unwelcome advent of young Brinsley Otway, to make his wife.
“I’m afraid--I ought not to have asked you to dance. Do forgive me,
Sibell, won’t you?” he asked, deeply penitent.

“Of course,” replied the girl, whose head was swimming. “It was not
your fault. I’m--well, I’m a little giddy, that’s all. Give Moyna a
dance, will you? I’ll sit quiet.”

Thus invited, her friend asked:

“You are quite sure you’re all right, dear? If not, we’ll go back to
the hotel at once.”

“Quite. I’ll feel better if I remain here.”

So the pair crossed to the floor and began to Charleston.

“She looks rather bad,” Gretton murmured into his partner’s ear.

“Yes. We’d better take her home soon, I think. She’s not used, it
seems, to hectic nights”; and she smiled.

Meanwhile to Sibell it seemed as though the dancers were floating
around her, while the music sounded harsh and discordant, far away.
She was twisting her bracelet around her wrist nervously and staring
straight before her. Both Gretton and his dancing-partner at once
realized that she was not herself.

“I feel very faint,” she replied, when Moyna asked how she was.

“Then we’d better get back. Don’t you think so, Mr. Gretton?” the girl
asked anxiously. “Don’t come with us. We can easily go back in a taxi.
It’s awfully good of you to have given both of us such a jolly nice
time. I’m only anxious for Sibell’s health. I’ve been like this myself
more than once. It’s nerves, of course.”

“No doubt,” said the man, taking up the cigarette he had left in the
tray and which was still alight. “But, of course, I’ll see you back to
the hotel.”

“You won’t,” declared the girl vehemently. “I won’t allow you to spoil
your evening. You’ve lots of friends here. I can take her home quite
well, so just see us to the ladies’ room--that’s all.”

“My dear Miss Lascelles, do you really think that I would allow you to
take Sibell back?” he protested. Then, with a smile, he added, “Sibell
and I are very old friends, and I would not dream of allowing you two
to go alone.”

And he called the obsequious waiter, to whom he hurriedly handed a
five-pound note, to pay the supper-bill.

As he was assisting Sibell into a taxi, the change was thrust into his
hand by the alert little Italian, who received a ten-shilling note as
his _pourboire_, and next moment the three were on their way back to
the Hotel Cecil.

On arrival Gretton accompanied them to the lift, saying:

“I hope you’ll be all right in the morning, my dear Sibell. It is most
unfortunate, isn’t it?” Then, turning to Moyna, he added, “If you want
anything in the night, just call me. I’m in No. 231.”

“Righto! and lots of thanks,” replied the girl, shaking his hand,
while Sibell, her brain still awhirl, sat in the lift and then managed
to walk along the corridor to her room, even though a trifle
unsteadily. Those ingeniously concocted cocktails, which are mixed in
all the dance clubs, had done their work, and she only had a most hazy
idea of what had occurred since her return to the table after dancing.

“Oh, my dear!” she gasped, as she sank upon her bed. “I--I feel most
awfully ill. I--I really don’t know what is the matter with me. I came
over horribly queer suddenly after that last drink which Gussie
pressed me to have. Did you have one?”

“Of course I did. But I’m quite all right. So why should you be so
queer?”

“I--I really don’t know, dear,” replied the girl, looking around the
room blankly with wild, startled eyes. “I was a silly fool. I ought
never to have allowed him to take us there. I’m sure Brin would have
strongly objected.”

“Well, he doesn’t know, and he need never know, my dear old
girl--unless you tell him.”

Then, as Moyna was helping the girl to undress, she went to the
toilet-table, and saw a telegram lying upon the white cloth.

“Why, here’s a wire for you! Fancy, we’ve never noticed it before!”

And she handed it to Sibell, who tore it open with nervous fingers.

“Brin will be back in London at half-past seven to-morrow morning!”
she said. “He has got word from Cookham that we are here for the
night. So he’ll call on us for early breakfast. Won’t it be fun?”

“Yes. But of course you’ll say nothing about meeting Gussie Gretton?”

“No. Of course not. It would only worry the dear old thing. And surely
he has lots of worry already. I’ll go to bed.”

And, while Moyna waited, she undressed, washed, put on a dainty
boudoir cap, and made her toilette for the night, assuming a pretty
nightie of pale-mauve crêpe-de-Chine.

She was already comfortably snuggled up in bed, and her friend had
kissed her good night, when suddenly Moyna, glancing at her hand,
exclaimed:

“Why, where’s your beautiful ring?”

Sibell started up in bed, staring aghast.

“Why, Gussie has got it! He wanted to have another look at it, and has
forgotten to give it back to me.”

“That’s awkward! Brinsley, when he meets you at breakfast, will surely
notice that it isn’t on your hand,” Moyna said. “You’ll have to get it
back--and to-night. You must, my dear!”

The girl, sitting up in her bed, gazed around her, her blue eyes
terror-stricken at her friend’s words. In an instant she was out of
bed.

“I--I must! Of course I must! Brin’s birthday-present to me! Oh!” And
she gasped, clutching her throat for air. “Oh, what a fool I was to
let Gussie have it! How absurd of him to keep it! What can I possibly
do?”

Then, glancing at the clock on the mantel-shelf, she said:

“Look! It’s late--past two o’clock! Where is he? How can I get it from
him?” she asked distractedly and half-dazed.

“He gave us the number of his room--231. Don’t you remember? It’s on
the second floor, evidently.”

“But Mr. Routh! He’s home by this time, no doubt. He could go and get
it,” Sibell suggested, standing beside the toilet-table and staring
vacantly into the mirror.

“For heaven’s sake, no! The old man might blurt it out in fun, and
Brinsley might know that Mr. Gretton is here. Don’t be a fool! Put on
your dressing-gown, and go down to Mr. Gretton’s room and get your
ring. There’s nobody about, and, besides, he’s forgotten all about it,
no doubt, and will hand it out to you!”

“Are you quite sure there’s nobody about?” asked the girl, and, to
reassure her, her friend opened the door cautiously and, looking up
and down the long corridor, said:

“No, nobody! Not a soul. Go down, and you’ll easily find the room and
get the ring. Then all will be well in the morning, and your fiancé
need not know anything. Why should he, after all?”

Sibell, instead of taking her kimono, slipped her feet into her little
pink slippers and put on her long fur travelling-coat over her
nightie, and in that attire and her boudoir cap, crept out of her room
and, slipping down the broad flight of red-carpeted stairs in the
silence of the night, stole quietly along the corridor until she found
Gretton’s room.

Very softly she tapped upon the door. At first there was no response,
but on tapping rather more loudly, she heard a movement within, and
next moment the door was opened by Gussie, in blue-striped pyjamas.

“Good heavens! Sibell! What’s the matter?” he asked. “Come inside.
Somebody may see you!” he whispered.

Next moment the girl was in his room, and they stood facing each other
with the door closed.

“I--I’ve come for my ring,” she managed to gasp. “Do give it back to
me at once. I must fly, for Moyna is waiting for me.”

The man instantly saw by her unusual expression that the cocktails and
champagne she had drunk had muddled her brain, and at once sought to
take advantage of it.

“Of course I’ll give you back the ring, my dear girl. But wouldn’t you
trust me with it till the morning?”

“No. Brinsley will be here before you are up. He’s coming to
breakfast. So he would certainly notice that I was not wearing it.”

“You could have made an excuse that you’d left it in your room,”
Gretton said with a smile, for in her pretty cap and with her
nightdress showing under her fur coat she looked extremely bewitching.

“No. I--I was afraid. Do give it to me at once, and let me go,” she
implored him.

“Of course I will,” he said, crossing the room to where his evening
clothes were folded upon a chair, and from the waistcoat pocket he
took the handsome ring.

Then, walking back to the door, he laughed, saying:

“I’ll give it to you, my dear Sibell, but only on one condition--that
you give me a kiss for its return.” And he placed his hand upon her
shoulder.

In an instant she shook him off, and, drawing herself up, said:

“I most certainly refuse! I’ve never kissed you, and I never will.”

“Ah! That’s the worst of it,” he sighed with a touch of sarcasm.
“Otway has all your caresses nowadays!”

“You are jealous of him, I know.”

“Perhaps I am,” the man said frankly. “You know how deeply I love you,
Sibell. At least, if you don’t, your aunt does. She has no use for
that young doctor, I tell you.”

The girl faced him, her eyes flashing.

“And what do my affairs concern my aunt, or even you, I ask?” she
cried. “You’ve told me your worn-out old story before--how you love me
and all that. But I’ve never believed you. Why, my dear man, you
pretend to love a dozen girls at the same time. What woman could ever
trust a man with your reputation?”

“You are extremely polite, I must say,” was his angry response.

“I merely tell you to keep your hands off me, and that I desire none
of your detestable love-making.”

“But why are you so intent on marrying this doctor fellow, Sibell?” he
asked in a more kindly voice. “Do you really think you are suited to
each other? You love life and gaiety, while he is a steady, plodding,
studious fellow, who must sooner or later bore you stiff.”

“Oh, don’t argue!” she said. “Just give me back my ring and let me go.
What will Moyna think if I’m down here so long?”

“Think!” he laughed. “Why, nothing! Girls don’t think nowadays; they
just act as their will directs them. It is Victorian to think.”

“But do let me get back, I beg of you, Gussie,” she cried.

“Gussie!” he echoed in gratification. “I like to hear you call me by
that name. You’ve always been so studiously formal and called me Mr.
Gretton. Do let me have a kiss--just one--in return for your ring.”

“I refuse! It isn’t fair of you to make such a condition when you know
so well the whole circumstances of my engagement,” protested the girl.

“But you look so sweet to-night that I can’t resist, even at the risk
of incurring your anger,” he said, and suddenly, ere she was aware of
it, he had gripped her and was raining hot kisses upon her
unresponsive lips.

Suddenly, with a supreme effort, she struck him a blow full in the
face, which caused him to release his hold, and then, like a tigress,
she fought, until at last, breathless and overcome, she sank
half-fainting into an arm-chair.

He held a glass of water to her dry lips as she lay back inert, her
boudoir cap awry, her eyes half closed, dazed and semi-conscious.

A few moments later she felt him take her hand and gently slip the
ring upon her finger.

Then she heard his voice, sounding as though afar off.

“Sibell,” he whispered into her ear, “I’m a brute! Forgive me! Do--I
beg of you! I--I lost my head. I--I didn’t know what I was doing! I’m
a damned blackguard to have kissed you against your will. I apologize.
Tell me that you will forgive me and--forget to-night,” he begged of
her, on his knees in supplication.

For some time she remained silent, then slowly her eyes became fixed
upon his countenance in a strange, stony stare.

“You have no right to have treated me so!” she declared in a hard,
bitter tone. “I came here to you in desperation to get my ring,
because I feared that my fiancé might miss it. What would he have
said had he discovered it in your possession?”

“Quite true,” said the man. “What indeed would Otway say if he ever
knew that you had been here for over half-an-hour!”

She stood rigid. Then she cried:

“God! I never thought of that! Let me go, you swine! Let me get back
at once--at this moment, before anyone sees me.” Then, turning to him
suddenly, she put her arms out, and said breathlessly: “If you want my
forgiveness, Gussie--let me go. Peep outside and see that no one is in
the corridor.”

“Don’t be afraid, child! There’s nobody about at this hour--only the
night-watchman, who carries his tell-tale clock around at every hour,
which registers his tour of the hotel.” Then, as he raised her slim
hand and kissed it with studied courtesy, he asked: “Am I forgiven?
Say, yes.”

“You will be if you let me go. Look at the time. What will Moyna
think?”

“She’ll think nothing if she’s the sport I take her to be,” he
replied, with a man’s usual selfish disregard for the woman he may so
easily compromise.

Without a sound he advanced to the door, drew back the bolt, and
peeped out.

“Nobody!” he whispered. “Good night, my dear Sibell! When we meet
again let us both forget this meeting, I beg of you.”

Next instant she was in the corridor, dishevelled, for in her
excitement she had not looked at herself in the glass. Over the thick
carpet she passed silently in her slippers until, just as she came to
the stairs, two figures suddenly emerged from the shadows.

One man was a porter in uniform, and the other she recognized in a
flash.

She heard the words, hard and hoarse:

“Sibell! Now that I have watched I know it is true! I thought they
lied to me, but now I know that you do not belong to me--but to that
swine!”

The speaker was Brinsley Otway!




 CHAPTER XXVII.
 BY WIRELESS

A month had gone by--for Sibell a month of dark anxiety, shattered
hopes, a terrible blank despair, which had shattered her nerves, poor
child.

Constant appeals made to Brinsley had exacted nought, for he had
refused to see her; all her explanatory letters had been returned
unopened, which added to her despondency. A dozen times she had been
to Golder’s Green, but he had always been “out”; frantic telegrams had
had no effect in inducing him to grant her even a moment’s interview.
He had cut her out of his life.

Moyna Lascelles, sniggering and artificial after expressions of
regret, had gone to Yorkshire on a visit to a mythical cousin, while
Gussie Gretton, to whom Sibell wrote telling him of the tragic
_dénouement_ of the incident of the ring, had come quickly to her
side, apologizing most deeply, and trying to console her.

Old Gordon Routh, in whom his ward was compelled to confide, extended
to her his deepest sympathy, and made pretence of writing himself
strongly to Otway.

The girl’s lover, who had been so devoted, remained obdurate. He had
heeded that secret warning sent to him anonymously by one of Etta’s
friends. He had watched the girl enter Gretton’s room, and, with the
hotel valet, had stood concealed outside for over half-an-hour, when
he had caught her creeping back in her nightdress. What further proof
of her infidelity was wanted? He had watched with his own eyes, and,
consumed by most intense hatred for his rival, he would listen to no
extenuating circumstance or excuse.

Little did the poor fellow know of the deep and dastardly conspiracy
on the part of Etta Wyndcliffe and the man Ashe, or that long ago
Gussie Gretton had made the ex-decoy of trans-Atlantic card sharpers a
firm offer of five thousand or more on the day he married Sibell.

The girl had come into money, but that made the sensuous
man-about-town all the more keen, and he had increased his commission.
Therefore it was not surprising that old Routh, suspecting the truth
of the secret arrangement with Etta, welcomed him to Cookham in order
that he should make pretence of sympathy and perhaps bring off the
coup.

Sibell hated the fellow the more she saw of him. Her dire position was
entirely due to him. One afternoon, as he sat in the little cottage
drawing-room, she told him so. Coward that he was, he at once placed
the onus upon her, declaring that it was her fault alone that she had
gone to his room at that hour, when she might have so easily waited
till the morning.

“By the way,” he asked suddenly, “how long have you known that gay
young friend of yours, Moyna?”

“Marigold Ibbetson, an old schoolfellow of mine at Cheltenham,
introduced her to me at Cannes. She was with a friend of
Brinsley’s--an air-pilot named Cranston.”

The tall man, who sat back in the easy-chair with his long legs
crossed before the fire, grunted. A strange thought had arisen in his
mind. He had never told Sibell the truth, that on the day he had met
her at the Cecil he had received a mysterious telegram signed
“Richard,” telling him that if he stayed at the hotel in question that
night he would meet Sibell and a girl friend who were both at a loose
end.

Upon that message he had acted. He was now wondering who his friend
“Richard” might be. He knew many men by that name, and one day he
would no doubt discover the identity of the giver of such welcome
news.

“Why do you ask about Moyna?” inquired the girl, noticing that he
seemed very preoccupied.

Then, of a sudden, and for the first time, those words of the masked
cavalier at Gurnigel, who had uttered that strange warning, recurred
to her.

“Nothing,” he replied. “I merely wondered whether you knew her very
well.”

“It was all a sinister plot!” cried Sibell next moment, starting to
her feet wildly and pushing back her fair hair. “I see it all, now!--a
plot to part Brinsley from me! I was warned--and yet, I never heeded
it. I’ve been an absolute fool!”

“A plot, my dear Sibell! How could it be?” he asked in surprise, also
springing to his feet.

“It was--my God, it was! I was ignorant, but my enemies took advantage
of my innocence, and have brought all this to me! That man who warned
me,” she added. “Oh, if I only could know who he is!” And she wrung
her hands in desperation.

“What man? Dear child, do tell me. Even if you hate me, confide in me.
We’ve been friends for a good many years, haven’t we?”

“A--a man who warned me of the plot. And I’ve been blind to it--blind
until this moment.”

“Well, at least tell me how you received the warning,” Gretton begged
of her.

She stood against a chair, swaying to and fro, for at that moment she
had become half hysterical, and in a few brief sentences related to
him what had happened at the gay masked ball at the winter sports, and
the sudden disappearance of her gallant cavalier.

Gretton questioned her closely, but she knew nothing more than what
has already been related in these pages.

“But if there was a plot, how could that stranger possibly know?”
queried Gretton reflectively. “And, further, why should there be any
plot? If you fell in love with young Otway, that is surely your own
affair, and his. I admit, my dearest Sibell, that for a long time I’ve
been very fond of you, and I am still, but surely you don’t suspect me
of having any hand in any plot?”

“Oh, I can’t think! I can’t act--now that I have lost Brin!” cried the
white-faced girl in despair. “I have come into an inheritance which is
accursed. Yes, trebly accursed! Of that I am now confident!”

“How?” he asked.

“Is there not a curse placed upon the Guest House--a curse of many
years ago, probably in the days of Cardinal Wolsey? I am doomed to
live there, and my life wrecked! I hate the very name of the place
after all the terrible things that have happened there. And yet--yet,
if I do not live in that awful place, I lose my inheritance!”

Augustus Gretton, his countenance heavy and thoughtful, crossed the
room and looked gloomily out upon the small garden, with its early
spring flowers discernible in the dusk, and the grey chill river
beyond.

He was bewildered, perhaps for the first time in his hectic life. He
was indeed quiet, seeing light through the cloud of mystery, for he
recollected that Satanic bargain he had made with Sibell’s aunt, the
dance fiend who was a peeress, the bargain which had been raised to
twenty thousand pounds if he married her. He had offered a price for
the girl’s body, as an Arab sheik would offer, because he was wealthy,
and his money could buy all that he desired in the wealth-eager world
of London, wherein religion is to-day surely a mockery, and morals a
ridiculous farce with the curtains drawn down.

“I--I can’t bear you any more, Gussie--please forgive me,” the frantic
girl said, suddenly putting her hands upon his shoulder. “Do go. I beg
of you. If you were a girl you’d know. You are my friend, so you’ll go
and leave me to think. My God! I’d rather drown myself in the river
down there beyond the lawn than carry on any further. I--I’m
desperate! Don’t you see? We were both of us fools, Gussie--idiotic
fools. But I mean to discover who engineered us both into this plight
of which that mysterious man, the cavalier, warned me, a thousand
miles away,” she added determinedly.

“Then you will really forgive me?” said the man, with a true
expression of sympathy. “Do regard me, Sibell, not as the horrible hog
you think me. I’m sorry, awfully sorry that I kissed you in my room,
but--but really you were so sweet and charming that you were
irresistible. And, after all, you never kissed me--you never have.”

“What can I say?” replied the distracted girl, who stood before him in
her smart golfing kit.

“Only say, Sibell, that you forgive me, and let’s cry quits,” the man
said earnestly in a low, persuasive voice.

“Quits! And then?” asked the girl, for she was of strong and
determined will, a fact that her aunt, Etta Wyndcliffe, the seller of
souls, had never realized. The woman, adventuress as she was, had
merely regarded her as a very pretty, fair-haired débutante, to be
sold in the marriage market to the highest bidder, with of course big
profit to herself, just as she had sold others, and as she had decided
with the old hunchback guardian, Routh, beside that calm sea upon
those Belgian dunes in the previous summer.

That same afternoon, as Sibell, in the fast-falling dusk, sat with the
rich, thick-lipped sensualist who coveted her, a strange, tragic scene
was in progress in mid-Atlantic, where in the aftermath of a sudden
storm the sea ran high, causing the great liner on its way from
Southampton to New York to roll heavily.

The captain, a thick-set, round-faced, cheery man, was having his tea
alone in his cabin, as was his wont, when the ship’s doctor suddenly
entered.

“Have a cup, Dayne?” asked the well-known Atlantic commander. “We’re
in for another spell, I think.”

The doctor, a sharp-featured, narrow-faced, black-moustached man, who
had been on the _Ciceronic_ for five years, sank into the other
chintz-covered chair set before the fire and, with a word of thanks,
said:

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid there’s to be a death on board.”

“A death! That’s unfortunate. A passenger?”

“Yes, sir. A Mr. Rupert Kimball, United States subject of St. Louis.
He was quite well on the first day out. Has a lady friend on board--a
Mrs. Wilcox. Took ill last night with heart, and I’m afraid he won’t
last very long.”

“Any relatives to wireless to?” asked the captain sharply, pouring out
the doctor’s tea.

“I believe the lady is sending a message.”

“Will he last till we get over?” asked the captain, who, like all
seafaring men, hated a death on the voyage. He had a caul on board in
secret, as all men do who go down to the sea in ships. The secret caul
is supposed to give sailors immunity from disaster, even though a
corpse be carried to port. Yet they never speak about it.

“I don’t know. The poor chap seems to be in the last stage of angina,
and of course in such condition one can never tell.”

“Bad luck, doc,” said the captain, filling his big briar pipe, for at
that hour he always indulged in a smoke privately. It was the one hour
of the whole long day which he held sacred to himself, sacred from
passengers, worries, or official complaints. In that daily tea-hour he
became master of himself, as well as of the great thirty-thousand
tonner which carried the mails so regularly between Southampton and
New York. That was his one hour’s leisure in the day’s run.

Both he and the doctor were near neighbors and lived with their wives
in Southampton, and naturally began to chat about home affairs, when
of a sudden there came a knock at the cabin door, and the head purser
entered, saying:

“Sorry, sir. May I speak a moment with you, doctor?”

Dayne rose instantly, swallowed the tea the captain had poured out,
and walked unsteadily outside, for the ship was rolling heavily.

“I’m afraid that gentleman, Mr. Kimball, is very bad,” said the man in
uniform with a strong American accent. “The lady has just sent for
you. She says he’s dying!”

The ship’s doctor, hurrying along the deck, swiftly descended to the
sick man’s stateroom, where he found the dark-eyed, well-dressed woman
standing beside her sick friend’s bed, as she had done for the past
forty hours.

“I believe poor Rupert is dead!” she whispered, her face blanched and
staring. “A few moments ago he raised himself with a great effort and
insisted upon kissing me. Then fell back--and I’m afraid he’s gone!”

And, unable to control herself, she burst into a torrent of tears.

It did not take Dr. Dayne long to ascertain the truth. Rupert Kimball
was dead. He had succumbed to heart disease!

Tenderly, after making certain that life no longer existed, he drew
the sheet across the dead man’s face, and then led the deceased’s
friend silently from that little white enamelled stateroom, with its
narrow brass bed.

The woman staggered away, but he, turning the other way, did not
observe that the look on her face was more of horror than of distress.

Half an hour later the wireless operator tapped out a message to an
address at St. Louis in the United States, announcing the sudden death
of the passenger, but the truth was kept from everyone on board at the
captain’s request to Mrs. Wilcox, therefore dinner and dancing
proceeded, with the usual nightly gaiety, as it ever does on a
trans-Atlantic liner.

Etta Wyndcliffe dared not venture into the saloon, but commanded her
meal to be brought to her in her cabin, where alone she sat, her mouth
half-open, staring at her closed porthole, in front of which that
little silken curtain of pale-green swayed with the ship’s roll.

“I wonder! I wonder!” she whispered to herself in a low voice, scarce
above a whisper. She had not dressed for dinner, and passed the
tempting dishes untouched. The man who had come between herself and
fortune lay dead in the stateroom above.

Albert Ashe was anxiously awaiting news. She knew he was waiting for
the result of their clever scheme, the removal of their enemy by means
which should leave no trace.

She pretended to eat, and then at last, after the sweets were served,
she rose and placed both hands into her hair in desperation.

“Yes!” she cried aloud hoarsely. “I must arouse no suspicion. I must
remain calm! I must play my part as his friend--yes, play it to the
end.”

So, putting on her coat, she left her cabin and ascended to the
wireless office, where the young operator sat with the telephones upon
his ears.

He smiled, and, removing one of the ’phones from his ear, heard her
say in a low, tremulous voice.

“I--I want to send a very urgent message.”

“Yes, madam,” replied the polite young Marconi operator in uniform,
indicating the desk and pad of forms.

Upon one she wrote a message which she addressed to:


 “Thomas, Regent Palace Hotel, London. Poor Rupert has died suddenly
 from heart disease. Am desolate. Inform mother. Have wired St.
 Louis.--Wilcox.”


And within a few minutes the operator, with his hand upon his key,
tapped out the anxiously awaited news to Albert Ashe, who was
purposely at the hotel in question under the name of Sidney Thomas.

The sinister plot of the Guest House and its weird influence was
perhaps unequalled in the annals of the world’s crimes.

Only Etta and her accomplice knew. The truth was on the day before she
and Rupert Kimball sailed, she had, still posing as Mrs. Wilcox, hired
a car from a garage and driven her unwanted friend down to Hampton
Court, taking him, out of curiosity, to the Guest House, about which
there had been so much gossip.

Previously she had related to him the strange stories, and gave him to
read the article in the _Richmond and Twickenham Times_. It had
intrigued him; hence their visit there.

They passed through the house by permission of the foreman of the
decorators, and his only comment was:

“Well, it seems a very charming old house for any newly-married couple
to live in. That blue and grey scheme in the drawing-room is really
very artistic. An old house like this would be snapped up at a very
huge price in America, wouldn’t it? I’m glad to have seen it.”

Then, after remaining there half an hour, during which time they
visited all the rooms, they re-entered the hired car and drove back by
way of Kew and Hammersmith to London.

Poor fellow! Rupert Kimball, whatever might have been his past, never
in all his innocence dreamed of the poison shadows that had fallen
upon him--that mysterious evil which only five days later resulted in
his death from natural causes.




 CHAPTER XXVIII.
 A DEADLOCK

Lady Wyndcliffe had returned from America and was staying for two
days at the Myrtles.

Sibell had been compelled to describe to her aunt that unfortunate
incident at the hotel in London, and how she had suddenly become
parted from Brinsley. Etta became furious, and declared that the sole
blame should be taken by Gretton.

“Gussie always was an ass! He ought to have known better,” cried the
well-preserved woman, who, after a week in New York, where her friend
had been buried, had hastened back to London, travelling, of course,
in the name of Mrs. Wilcox. “I sympathize with you, my dear Sibell,”
she went on. “Can’t you make it up with Brinsley?” she asked, puffing
at her eternal cigarette, as they sat in the little drawing-room.

“He will not reply to any of my letters, nor will he consent to see
me,” said the girl despondently. “He has a locum now at Golder’s
Green, and has gone back to his mother’s.”

“H’m!” grunted the adventuress who bore such an honorable name. “Well,
it’s rather natural, after all, isn’t it? No man would stand seeing
with his own eyes his fiancée in _déshabille_ creeping out of a
man’s bedroom at three o’clock in the morning, would he?”

“I suppose not. But he won’t hear the truth.”

“The truth, my dear Sibell, is pathetic. Owing to your own foolish
action in going down to Gussie’s room at that hour, you’ve brought all
this upon yourself. As far as I can see, your engagement has been
entirely broken off, eh?”

“It has, no doubt,” said Sibell tearfully. “What am I to do, auntie?
Do advise me.”

The dark-haired woman remained silent for a few moments in order to
impress her niece. Then, looking her straight in the face very
earnestly, said:

“There is only one thing to do, my dear. And I strongly advise it.
Gussie is devoted to you--you know that well. He is frantic about you,
and has written three letters to me. He loves you quite as well as
Otway ever did. You’ve lost Otway--accept Gussie.”

“Never!” she cried, stamping her little foot in desperation. “I’ll
never marry him!”

“But just pause for a moment. Don’t get into a temper, dear, because I
want to give you sound advice. Gussie is very rich, and, with your own
fortune, think what you both could do! In a moment you would figure in
Society and move in the best circles, and, further,” she added, again
pausing and remembering the clause of the will by which part of Henry
Dare’s fortune would revert to Gordon Routh, “have you never thought
that if you cared you need not live in that accursed Guest House? If
you liked to marry Gussie you could forego this evil inheritance left
you by your Uncle Henry.”

The point had never occurred to her, and, admitting it, she sat for a
few minutes very calm and thoughtful.

“But I could never marry Mr. Gretton, auntie--never!” she declared at
last. “I don’t love him--especially after that night at the Cecil!”

“Then all I can say is that you’re a silly little fool,” declared Lady
Wyndcliffe. “I’ve met so many of your romantic temperament--girls I’ve
taken round Society. But very soon romance gets knocked out of them by
their daily disillusions, and they end by making marriages of
convenience, and money makes up for what men call love.”

“You sneer at love, auntie,” cried the girl reproachfully.

“Indeed, I don’t, dear,” the woman replied. “I only say that the girl
who marries for love nowadays suffers a silly martyrdom of jealousy,
for in these hectic days a man is seldom, if ever, true to a woman,
either before marriage or after.”

“Even though you have had wide experience, auntie, I refuse to believe
it to be the general rule.” Then of a sudden, she remarked: “It’s a
lovely afternoon. I’m going to take ‘Tiz-oh’ for a walk,” indicating
her sweet little Pekingese, who, hearing his name, rose, stretched
himself, and came waddling towards her.

Five minutes later the girl went forth into the glorious spring
afternoon with her pet at her heels.

Already the beautiful Thames valley was clothed in its freshest green,
the orchards were white with blossom, the birds in full song, and the
sky cloudless as she swung along, a smart, well-set-up figure in her
beige jumper-suit and close-fitting black hat.

From her usually bright, open countenance all the sunshine of life had
died out. Pale, hollow-eyed, and despairing, her face gave a true
index to her perplexed state of mind.

As she strode along blindly, she was reflecting upon her aunt’s
suggestion that, Brinsley having forsaken her, she should at once
accept Augustus Gretton’s offer, and take her place in Society with
the smart house in Upper Brook Street which was Gussie’s.

As Etta had pointed out, with her artful insidiousness, Gussie was
well-known in London, and already the Conservatives had tried three
times--on account of his ability to contribute to the Party funds--to
induce him to put up for a borough constituency. The Borough of
Guildford was suggested, and after that Bournemouth, and then West
Hartlepool. But man-about-town that he was, and gossiper at his club,
with his perfect English--for indeed no better English is spoken than
in a West End club--political bickering had never appealed to him.

As she swung along the long, damp road, stick in hand and her pet
Pekingese beside her, she reflected deeply upon her position.

Brinsley, to whom she was devoted, whose every word had been her law,
whose lips she had met in those hot, fevered caresses, whose hugs had
thrilled her with a sensation that had become her delirium of delight,
had now cast her aside as worthless, and had gone away.

She had now to decide whether to accept her uncle’s fortune and live
alone in that ancient house of evil at Hampton Court, or live with
Gretton as her husband, a mockery of life of up-to-date gaiety--a
hollow sham such as many a girl might enjoy.

Which should she choose? As she went along that dull, muddy road in
her thick golfing brogues and swinging her ash stick, she thought it
all over.

Now and then “Tiz-oh” her Peke lagged behind, and she would whistle
him to come to heel. In her walk she became self-absorbed. Her aunt
had put before her the most difficult of all the problems in her young
life.

She had passed the Ferry Hotel, that riverside resort so popular in
summer, with its pretty lawn and landing-stage, which was usually so
gay with its punts and riverside folk, yet on this early spring
afternoon was deserted and forlorn.

At the door stood a youngish, clean-shaven man in a dark blue
rain-coat, erect and smart, with something of the appearance of a
ship’s officer. His grey felt hat was set at an angle, and as she
passed, he was so entirely engaged in lighting his cigarette in the
wind that he scarcely looked up at her. The glance was only a
momentary one, but sufficient to cause him to become the more intent
upon lighting his cigarette.

Sibell, in her distracted state, did not give the young fellow another
glance, but continued down the road. He was no doubt one of the many
Thames lovers who, year in and year out, stay at the Ferry.

The young man turned back into the hotel, and, on second thoughts,
entered the coffee-room and ordered his tea. Then he took up an old
illustrated paper and began to read.

Just as the neat waitress brought in the tray, heavy footsteps were
heard descending the stairs, and into the room came a man who had been
staying there for the past three days, taking long walks about the
country-side, a hale and hearty old gentleman named Mr. Herbert Smee,
who came from Northampton, and was a retired leather merchant.

“Nice afternoon, sir!” cheerily exclaimed the younger man, whose name
was Gleeson, and who was a commercial traveller. “I was just going for
a stroll, but thought I’d first have my tea.”

“So am I,” replied the rather short old man. “May I come out with
you?”

“Certainly,” was the younger man’s reply, for Mr. Smee had, during the
two days they had been fellow-guests there, struck him as an extremely
intelligent and well-informed old fellow, possessed of a vast amount
of learning. His business, he understood, had taken him abroad a great
deal, especially to the East and to the centres of the trade in hides.

After tea they strolled out together, when, in about half an hour,
they met Sibell with her dog returning. As she passed, the younger man
gave her an inquiring glance, but at the same time he kept a watchful
eye upon his companion’s grey face. The elder man, though he pretended
not to notice her, had turned somewhat pale, and then halted for a
moment in pretence of searching his pockets for his pipe, but in
reality in order to recover himself from that unexpected meeting,
which young Gleeson had so cleverly engineered.

Presently they returned to the pleasant little village, passing beyond
their hotel, and continued on for a further quarter of an hour, when,
from the gate of the Myrtles, there emerged Sibell, accompanied by her
aunt, who wore a handsome fur coat, both women walking in their
direction.

The men were discussing a film which both had seen in London, when
Gleeson suddenly interrupted the other by saying:

“Here comes a very handsome woman. Don’t you think so? I wonder who
she is?”

“Who knows?” grunted the old man, whose face clouded instantly, and
his watchful companion was intrigued to notice his disguised anxiety
to avoid her.

After another twenty minutes or so they returned to the Ferry, where,
in the hour before dinner, they sat smoking and gossiping.

Meanwhile at the Myrtles Etta Wyndcliffe, who had suddenly remembered
an engagement in London, was busily packing in order to leave directly
after dinner.

The presence at Cookham of that little old fellow and his companion
had alarmed her.

She had recognized the stranger staying at the Ferry as Albert Ashe’s
mysterious friend, a Mr. Pearson.

What was he doing at Cookham? That was the point which puzzled her.
And who was the smart, alert man who appeared to be his bosom friend?

Before ten o’clock that night she was at Paddington, and, having taken
a room at the Great Western Hotel in the name of Mrs. Wilcox, she at
once drove to Ashe’s rooms in St. James’s.

Having previously telephoned from her room in the hotel, she found the
man anxiously awaiting her.

In a few quick, breathless sentences she told him of her encounter,
while he stood aghast.

“What the devil is he doing down there? Why?” he cried, surprised.
“And who can his companion be? Suppose Sibell has recognized him?”

“She hasn’t. They’ve never met. Unless she remembers him at Cannes.”

“By Jove! They must never meet, eh? We had one damned narrow escape
with the dear, departed Rupert. We don’t want to risk a second.”

“I’ve been persuading Sibell to marry Gussie,” said the woman, casting
off her furs wearily. “She’s an obdurate little simpleton, for any
other girl but her would jump at the chance, thereby giving us all the
commission we want and making everybody happy, even doddering old
Gordon himself. But life is so full of disappointments, annoyances,
and--well, narrow escapes, eh? my dear Albert!”

“And how does the girl take it?” asked the ex-butler, as he helped
himself to a drink from the decanter on the sideboard.

“Resentful at first, but, after due reflection, she’s rather inclined
to change her views. We must not allow her to make it up with Otway at
all costs,” the woman added.

“That she’ll never do. I’ve made friends with the doctor who is
looking after his practice, a fellow named Lancaster, and you bet I
gave the young lady a great character for honesty. I saw that my words
sank in, and I know he’ll let out what he has learnt from a reliable
source--myself. I urged him to keep the secret, but he’s a blithering
young idiot, and I know he’ll tell Otway at the first opportunity.”

“That’s all very well, Albert. But things are rapidly coming to a
crisis. Where do we really stand?”

“We stand in with Gordon, don’t we?--not with old Pearson, surely.”

“I don’t know so much about that. He might very easily be in the cart
with all three of us if we’re not very careful, you know! It’s a
desperate game we are now playing!”

“There! You’ve got the wind up again--you silly fool!” said the man.

“Why do you say that? I didn’t have it on that terrible voyage to New
York! I played the game--That you must admit.”

“Then play it again,” urged the man, with a weird grin. “We’ve gone so
far, and we can’t turn back now. Sibell must marry Gussie Gretton--she
has to--or, by heaven, we shall both be up at the Old Bailey. So the
future is up to you. Up to you! You hear that?” he cried in a hard,
decisive voice.

The woman placed her hands over her ears to shut out his fierce and
unholy demands.




 CHAPTER XXIX.
 FURTHER MYSTERY

Next morning, readers of the _Daily Express_ were much intrigued by
a paragraph below a heavy head-line, “The House of Mystery,” which
appeared in that journal.

Albert Ashe’s habit was to have the paper brought by the man with his
early tea, and as he lazily scanned it, his eye caught the heading. He
read it through, then, springing suddenly from his bed, he crossed to
the telephone near the door and rang up Mrs. Wilcox at the Great
Western Hotel.

In a few moments he was put through to her.

“Listen, Etta! Get the _Daily Express_ and read what’s there. Have
your breakfast first, and then come over here to me,” he said
guardedly.

“What’s in the paper? Anything wrong?” asked the woman in quick
apprehension.

“I can’t tell you on the ’phone. Just get the paper and read it. See
you later.” And he rang off. His full face was pale and his hands
trembling, for he was evidently terrified at what he had read.

He sat upon the side of his bed in his pyjamas and reread as follows.


 “For some months great curiosity and much controversy have been evoked
 by the reopening of an ancient mansion, the Guest House, at Hampton
 Court--so called because it was used by Cardinal Wolsey to house his
 guests when, with his boundless hospitality, they overflowed from
 Hampton-Court Palace. It’s romantic history, and the reason its late
 owner closed it years ago, has already been told in the _Daily
 Express_, but some entirely inexplicable occurrences have lately
 happened there from time to time which have led the local residents to
 regard it as a House of Evil.

 “After a recent auction sale, in which the whole antique contents were
 cleared at enormous prices, a firm of decorators--Messrs. Hudson &
 Brown, of Hammersmith--were given orders to entirely renovate and
 redecorate the place, so that it might be refurnished and rendered fit
 for the new proprietress--a young lady who benefited under the
 will--to take up her residence there. Following the reopening of the
 place, after being closed for over thirty years, there were curious
 circumstances. Several men were unaccountably taken ill, and, after a
 critical period, recovered, while in one case, at least, a victim of
 the evil influence, a caretaker and ex-police-constable named Farmer,
 died mysteriously--all being affected by some fatal disease of the
 heart.

 “The latest mystery connected with these premises, upon which a
 sinister influence appears to rest, occurred at four o’clock yesterday
 afternoon, when, the redecoration of the premises being near
 completion, a French-polisher named Burton, living at the Mall,
 Hammersmith, while at his work upon the main staircase, suddenly
 collapsed, and within five minutes expired.

 “The police were at once notified, and the body was, in due course,
 removed to the mortuary, where an inquest will be held.”


“Damn it! What next!” ejaculated Ashe, and then with hard, serious
face he shaved and dressed, ready to meet the woman to whom he had
posed as servant at West Halkin Street.

An hour later she stood in his room.

“Well? You’ve seen it, eh?” he exclaimed. “The poor devil died, and
now there’ll be yet another inquiry! Suppose Sibell goes there and she
gets affected! What about her marriage, and what about us? She has to
be protected: you’ll admit that?”

“Of course, my dear Albert,” replied the handsome woman standing at
the window and looking aimlessly down upon the dull, narrow West End
thoroughfare. “What I’m working for is the amalgamation of the two
fortunes. If we can do that, we can screw up Gussie to almost any
figure we like. Sibell must not be frightened into giving up her
inheritance, as she very well may be. If so, Gordon Routh will reap
all the benefit of our constant labors. And we can’t afford that, eh?”

“I see in the same paper that Wyndcliffe is coming home on the
_Homeric_,” he said.

“Not yet. I cabled to him yesterday saying that I was bored with
London, and would join him next month, and go across to California
with him. I’m getting him to buy an orange ranch there to keep him
employed. So his return here is only paper talk. The further he is out
of the way the better. Don’t you agree?”

“Of course I do, my dear girl. This occurrence last night is, however,
most unfortunate, as it brings another official inquiry, and the more
the public curiosity is aroused, the more insecure our position. The
girl’s a damned little fool not to marry Gussie straight away and cut
that young bug-hunter out of it. She must--she must!” he cried
vehemently.

“Yes, Albert,” declared the woman, “I agree that she must, for the
sake of all of us.”

“But what do you suspect to be the true secret of the Guest House? I
ask you that,” he demanded.

“My dear Albert, I tell you quite frankly that I’m just as much in the
dark as you are. It’s horrible--demoniac, one might say.”

He paused.

“Well, don’t, for heaven’s sake, let us take any risks ourselves.”

“I shan’t, because I’m a woman,” she said. “You may--as a man.”

“God help me, I hope not. But I tell you that, after reading this
report, I’m absolutely afraid to enter the place,” Ashe said.

“Lots of other people are, too. This affair of the man Burton is
absolutely amazing! Yet, if no woman has been affected, why should not
Sibell be immune? That’s a problem.”

“But has it never occurred to you that the girl Forrester, whom Henry
Dare was about to marry years ago, was taken ill there, and died
mysteriously?”

“Not taken ill actually in the house,” Lady Wyndcliffe retorted.
“According to what we know, she was walking in Bushey Park--up the
chestnut avenue one spring morning, to be exact--and suddenly she felt
faint, stumbled, and fell, and was carried to the Guest House to die.
Again”--and she lowered her voice to a whisper, and said--“remember
that Rupert did not feel any ill-effects of his visit to the place
until at sea six days later. How can anybody account for it?”

“Nobody can, my dear Etta, and nobody ever will, if we still remain
astute and wary,” said the big, athletic man. “Your plan, now that
Rupert doesn’t trouble us any more, is to get Sibell to marry Gretton.
I’m broke to the world--and so are you, I expect. I’ve about fifty
quid between myself and a Rowton House, that’s all. The landlord of
this place will never be paid, I can assure you”; and he chuckled
hoarsely to himself. “Men who pay landlords are fools--unless they
live in hotels. Then the weekly bill on one’s dressing-table has to be
settled, aye or nay.”

“What are we to do, Albert?” the woman asked eagerly.

“Wait and see what the coroner’s jury have to say; and let’s hope that
Sibell doesn’t see the case in the papers. If so, she’ll be more
scared than ever.”

“Perhaps it will induce her to throw up the inheritance and fall into
Gussie’s ready embraces. I only hope so.”

“Heavens! So do I,” laughed the man. “We must wait, my dear girl, and
that’s all. But we must also find out from the old man first why he is
at the Ferry at Cookham, and, secondly, who is the friend who walks
with him there.”

“I’m a bit suspicious of that young fellow,” declared the woman. “And
yet the old man is the most clever and elusive person I’ve ever
met--and I’ve met a few men in my time. You know what I mean?”

After that Ashe nodded, and his visitor, swallowing a liqueur brandy
which he poured out for her, wished him a merry adieu, and left him.

The report of the mysterious death of the workman Burton was seen by
Gordon Routh, who at once showed it to his ward, hoping thereby, as
Etta hoped, that it would bring her to a decision to forgo her evil
inheritance and accept Gussie.

The girl read the account and shuddered. The Guest House was, indeed,
a house of death, and hers was only a fatal inheritance.

Was she to share the same fate as Henry Dare’s fiancée in the
Victorian days? She reflected that the innocent girl who, like
herself, was in a few days to be a bride, had not been taken ill in
the house, but outside, in the public park close by. Again, it was
more than curious that, though so many women had entered the house
since its reopening, viewing its contents and attending the
three-days’ sale, no one had suffered any deleterious effect.

Two days later the result of the inquest was reported. The man Burton
had died of a heart attack, revealed by the post-mortem examination,
hence, to the public, the affair was no longer a mystery.

On that day Etta, who was pretending to Sibell to be staying with some
friends at Hampstead, went down to the Myrtles to remain for a couple
of nights, her real object being at all hazards to induce the girl to
accept Gretton. Sweet and lovable as was Sibell’s nature, she was also
a girl of strong and determined will. Once she made a decision, it was
almost impossible to persuade her otherwise. She had lost the one and
only love of her life, therefore she felt that she could never
simulate affection for any other man than Brinsley, her ideal, her
soul-mate, and the controller of her destiny.

Hour by hour she sat in that dull country cottage, with the old
hunchback ever working out his eternal “systems” of roulette and
_trente-et-quarante_. In those hours she dissected her own soul,
becoming more and more convinced that marriage with Gretton was
utterly impossible.

When her aunt very discreetly broached the subject after dinner, while
they were alone, she told her quietly and frankly that her unalterable
decision was to remain single.

“What, live alone in that awful place?” cried her aunt. “Why, my dear
Sibell, it would be all too impossible! You’re absolutely mad to think
of such a thing! And then, if you don’t live there, you will be
compelled to relinquish your fortune!”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve already decided to live there, and discover
the cause of this strange evil which appears to pervade the place,”
was the girl’s calm, well-thought-out reply. “Already I have given
orders for the carpets, and a portion of the furniture. I’ve given the
people carte blanche to furnish it up to three thousand pounds. That
will be a beginning.”

“But surely you won’t live alone there?” her aunt said, her eyes
staring as she suddenly realized that not only her fat commission, but
Routh’s share, were also slipping from them.

“I can hire a companion. Lots of girls are fond of adventure. I know
one who was at school with me at Cheltenham.”

“Well, my dear, I tell you frankly that I’d be scared out of my wits
if I had to live in such an awful tomb. Satan himself seems to dwell
there.”

“My dear auntie,” replied the girl, “you don’t understand! Now that
I’ve lost Brin I’ve lost all interest in everything in life, except to
solve the problem of that house of evil,” she went on in a hard,
despairing tone quite unusual to her. “In three weeks the house will
be finished in readiness for me. I made up my mind over a week ago.
Old Martha, who was Mrs. Sherwood’s servant at Ripley before her
death, is coming as my housekeeper, and she is engaging the servants.”

Etta’s alert mind was quickly at work.

“You’ll surely want a man in the house, dear, if you really intend to
embark upon this curious housekeeping,” she said. “Why not let me try
and find Ashe? He was an excellent man. I fear I was rather peevish
with him that day when I dismissed him so abruptly. I’ve been sorry
ever since.”

“Well, you said all sorts of nasty things against him, auntie,”
remarked the girl. “But certainly I know him, and perhaps, after all,
he’d be better than a stranger. I wonder where he is.”

“Oh, I’ll find out,” replied her aunt quickly. “You really can’t do
better than engage him, if you are actually going to set up house
alone. I expect the agency in Marylebone Street from which I engaged
him will know. He’s awfully loyal, and such an excellent man at table.
It will be funny, when I come as your guest, that he will wait upon
me, won’t it?”




 CHAPTER XXX.
 THE PLOT

In the dreary weeks which followed, while Sibell waited for her home
to be prepared, she often stayed at a small private hotel in Cork
Street, where she had lived in the London Season with her hunchbacked
guardian, old Routh.

She had engaged as companion a girl named Edith Pearman, who, on
leaving Cheltenham, had become a governess in a private school at
Scarborough, and welcomed her old school-friend’s proposition. A
well-educated girl of a somewhat severe, angular exterior, she wore
horn-rimmed glasses, as a school-mistress should, yet, at heart, she
was a most cheerful, laughing optimist, and, having learnt all about
her friend’s bitter disappointment, consoled her.

Meanwhile, Gussie Gretton, prompted by Lady Wyndcliffe of course, was
constant in the renewal of his attentions. He came round to Cork
Street daily to take her out in his car for one or two runs to places,
where they lunched and chatted, but all with little satisfaction to
the ardent lover. Sibell was, of course, entirely ignorant of the vile
compact which her go-ahead aunt had made, and simply regarded the
elegant man’s desire to please as the natural outcome of his
responsibility for Otway’s parting from her.

For a young doctor, fresh from hospital, to obtain even a foothold in
his profession is indeed hard enough to-day. The old and out-of-date
general practitioners, who have made enough to retire upon, are mostly
snappy and crusty; if his young partner is a few minutes late for
“surgery” he will not fail to snarl at him.

But Brinsley had been through the mill as house surgeon at an
infirmary, and had actually secured a corner house with a red lamp, as
every general practitioner longs for, and had very soon, by his merry
disposition and kindness to the poor, acquired quite a good practice
among the good people of that London suburb, Golder’s Green.

Yet, in a single night, all his love for Sibell had been blotted out,
and well it might have been in such circumstances. Poor Sibell
remained disillusioned and dispirited, with one determination only--to
discover the secret of that evil influence which pervaded the house
wherein the guests of Cardinal Wolsey had often been entertained in
those long-ago days of the full glories of Hampton Court Palace.

More than once, accompanied by her new companion, Edith, she drove
down to the Guest House in a hired car, and went over the place, here
and there directing the furnishers, who were busily at work. The work
occupied her distracted mind.

The long drawing-room, so dull, stately, and full of a bygone
atmosphere, had assumed an entirely modern aspect, with its
white-bordered panels of old-rose brocade, and a rich Wilton carpet to
match. Some of the best pieces of old furniture were there--the
fifteenth-century credence, which Bond Street dealers had begged her
to sell; the old oaken cupboard with long, wrought-iron hinges, where,
upon its top, an Elizabethan helmet, deeply rusted, had been placed.

When first she entered to inspect the spacious apartment, with its
long windows, she expressed delight at its transformation. In one
corner stood that heavy old velvet-covered armchair of the Florentine
Renaissance, into which Mr. Gray, the auctioneer, had sunk,
half-insensible, when he collapsed so suddenly.

A strong smell of fresh enamel and varnish pervaded everything, each
room having been redecorated and refurnished out of all recognition.
Some of the old leaded diamond panes of the ancient windows had been
replaced by sheets of plate glass, and on every hand there were modern
conveniences--electric lights cunningly concealed in heavy white
cornices, and hot-water radiators were in all the bedrooms.

As on that day she went with Edith over the place, the foreman of the
furnishing house said to her, after descending from the upper floor:

“The only thing that has not been touched is the wine-cellar, Miss
Dare. At Mr. Gray’s orders it has not been opened, for he has the key.
He said he would consult you before any alteration is made there.”

“Yes. I will see him about it when I come to live here,” replied the
girl, expressing the greatest satisfaction as to the up-to-date scheme
of furnishing.

“I fear some things may appear incongruous,” said the pleasant-faced
man in a black overcoat. “There are several really priceless old
pieces here, mixed up with quite modern stuff--an arrangement of which
a connoisseur might not approve. But we understood, Miss Dare, that
what you had put aside in storage was to be used.”

“Most certainly. The house is mine,” she laughed. “It is not the house
of a connoisseur.”

On her return to Cork Street she found a telephone message from her
aunt awaiting her, saying that she was calling at six o’clock.

Almost punctually she arrived, and, bursting into the room in her
usual impetuous way, she exclaimed:

“Oh, my dear Sibell, I’ve to-day discovered where Ashe is to be found!
If you write to him to Hammond’s Registry, Goodge Street, Tottenham
Court Road, the letter will find him. I’d write at once, dear, if I
were you.”

Sibell promised she would, whereupon Lady Wyndcliffe said:

“You’re going to the new house on Monday week, aren’t you? Poor Gordon
will be awfully lonely without you.”

“Oh, I hope to see him as my guest very often, auntie--and you also,”
she declared. “I’ve just been down to Hampton Court, and the place is
quite transformed--so bright and artistic. You must really come and
see it.”

“I fear I can’t, dear. I’m so sorry. As you know, I’ve closed West
Halkin Street while Wyndcliffe is away, and I’m going to Scotland
to-morrow to visit the McKays at Dalry. But I do hope you’ll be very
happy, notwithstanding that you have not chosen Gussie as a husband.”

“I might change my mind,” laughed the girl saucily. “Who knows?”

“Well, dear, I heartily hope you will, for a life alone in that house
is surely no existence for you.”

And, having applied her lipstick before the mirror and rearranged her
hat, she shook hands and left, saying as she went out:

“Now, mind that you write to Ashe to-night or you may lose him!”




 CHAPTER XXXI.
 REJUVENATION

Spring was lengthening into summer, and already the spacious garden
of the Guest House, now so well kept after so many years of neglect,
was full of bright flowers, while the ancient trees, including a rare
“strawberry-tree,” threw a welcome shade on a sunny day.

Sibell and her boon companion, Edith Pearman, had already installed
themselves for over three weeks, living quietly and comfortably,
though in the long hours the girl’s thoughts were ever of her lost
lover--the love of her life. The servants, under the trusted old
cook-housekeeper, carried on well, but in place of the obedient
Ashe--who, at the last moment, made excuses not to enter Miss Dare’s
service--an erect, rather smart, and narrow-faced youngish man, named
Charlesworth, had applied for the post and obtained it.

At their first interview Sibell felt just a faint suspicion that she
had seen the young man before, but after long cogitation, and
examining the excellent credentials from a peer who had recently died
which he presented to her, she had engaged him. The fact was that they
had met before, but the girl could not recall the circumstances.

Ashe had at first been most anxious to become butler to his
ex-mistress’s niece, but, having talked it all over in his room in St.
James’s with the former, he declared himself too nervous to live in
that house.

“Remember what happened to our dear departed Rupert after you had
taken him to see the place,” he said to her. “No, my dear girl, I’m
not going to risk it! Are you?”

Hence, Ashe having withdrawn, Charles Charlesworth became installed in
his place.

Sibell had allowed herself the luxury of a new and expensive car, with
a good-looking young chauffeur named Budd; therefore, when old Gordon
Routh came to his ward’s house as visitor for a week, she took him for
pleasant runs down to Brighton, Bournemouth, and Guildford.

With a big bank balance and quite a new set of friends growing up
around her, Sibell Dare would have been intensely happy had she still
possessed the affection of the one man whom she adored.

Alas! his silence remained unbroken. He was living with his mother in
the North, a disappointed, disillusioned misanthrope, from whose heart
all the zest of life had been crushed.

Gussie Gretton had driven down to call. His visit had been a mere
formal one to look her up, and both were careful to avoid any
discussion concerning the past.

One bright afternoon he called a second time, being admitted by the
quiet-mannered Charlesworth.

“Well, Sibell!” he cried cheerily as he entered the long, handsome
drawing-room. “Going on all right? No spooks or devils, or that kind
of unholy influence, now that all the cobwebs have been cleared away,
eh?”

“Nothing,” answered the girl, laughing merrily. “I’m beginning to
think, Gussie, that those various affairs were all mere coincidences.
Some enemy of our family gave the place a bad name, and it has stuck
to it. That’s the opinion I am beginning to form, and Mr. Routh thinks
so, too.”

“Well, it really seems so,” agreed her visitor, taking the cigarette
she offered him. “People have declared this place to be a house of
death, and some fussy old men, who call themselves antiquaries, have
professed to have dug out all sorts of weird stories of its past. All
uncanny, I admit; but how can people possibly come here and be
affected by some evil influence which causes illness, and in more than
one instance, actual death? It’s all bunkum, I say!” Then, as an
after-thought, he added, “By the way, have you heard yet from Otway?”

The girl shook her head sadly in the negative, and in an instant he
saw that he had approached the most painful subject in her heart.

“Do forgive me, Sibell. I’m awfully sorry that I should have referred
to the past!” he hastened to say, laying his hand tenderly upon her
shoulder. “I don’t forget that it was all my fault, and now I frankly
tell you, my dear Sibell, that if ever I can help you in any way
whatever in the future, you have only to count upon me as your
friend.”

She sat up in her chair and looked into his eyes, half believing him.

At that moment the well-set-up young butler, Charlesworth, entered,
carrying the big Georgian silver tea-tray, and, having arranged it,
left silently and closed the door after him.

“Do you really mean that?” she asked.

“I honestly do,” he answered. “And do you know why, Sibell?” And he
paused. “Well, strictly between ourselves, I believe that you’ve been
the victim of some vile, damnable conspiracy, which has something to
do with your inheritance. More, I do not know. That is my distinct and
unalterable suspicion.”

“But why?” cried the blue-eyed girl excitedly. “Why should anyone plot
against me? Surely, in all my life, I haven’t done a soul any harm!”

“Those who are innocent always suffer where greed of money is
concerned,” the man replied. He had assumed a friendly and kindly
attitude towards her. “That there is a plot, Sibell, I feel
convinced,” he said, recollecting the vile proposition concerning
commission that Lady Wyndcliffe had put to him one night at Ciro’s
eighteen months before. He, as one of the most eligible bachelors in
London, was reflecting upon a phase of life that he knew.

Open your morning paper and glance at the simpering Society brides in
their little lace caps edged with orange blossom, smiling on the arms
of their bridegrooms as they leave West End churches. Then, for a
moment, reflect upon those who grace the dinner-tables of Mayfair, and
reap their harvest of fat commissions each London season.

“Fewer marriage-mongers, fewer divorces,” said a candid judge in the
Divorce Court not so very long ago. In the papers the Society divorce
equals in attraction the Society marriage, until the commonplace would
become staggered by the matrimonial chessboard of _Who’s Who_.

Gussie Gretton, awkward, as is every man, sat with his well-toasted
tea-cake upon his lap and drank his China tea, and then, excusing
himself to Sibell and to Edith, who had come in late after a walk over
to Molesey, he rose, and was handed into his car by the ever-ready
Charlesworth.

Sibell went to her room. She wanted to be alone to think. Already,
after those few weeks, the big house, which smelt so strongly of fresh
enamel and the odor of new carpets, had begun to pall upon her.

She cast herself into a soft chair, and in the dull twilight thought
over Gretton’s curious suggestion that there was some desperate and
most insidious plot against her in order to compel her to leave the
house and refuse to live there.

Her lawyers had made it entirely plain to her that in such case, under
the terms of her Uncle Henry’s will, she would have no alternative but
to relinquish all claims to its benefits. She realized, too, that the
only person to derive profit would be her hunchback guardian, old
Gordon Routh.

That night she dined early with Edith, and afterwards went up to town
in the car to a new play at Wyndham’s. Budd, the smart chauffeur, in
his dark-green livery and polished gaiters, had been in the service of
a queen of the variety stage, and was most polite and attentive in the
wrapping of warm wraps. He had good wages and full licence to go
hither and thither, save when he was wanted to drive, therefore he
naturally regarded his mistress with the same solicitude as he had
done the alert little lady of the music-halls who had married a peer’s
son.

When the theatres had “burst”--that time-signal known to every London
chauffeur or taxi-driver--he carried his charges speedily back to
Hampton Court, though the night was misty.

It was late when the car drove in, but the alert Charlesworth was up
to serve the girls with their cups of tea before retiring.

On the table in the dining-room lay a wire from Sibell’s aunt, which
read:


 “Returning to town to-morrow. Can I stay with you next Thursday for
 the week-end?”


The girl showed it to her companion, and agreed that they would both
be delighted to have Lady Wyndcliffe as guest. Only a week before, in
the London gossip of the _Daily Sketch_, there had been a brief
paragraph that “Sadie Dexter, daughter of Issy Dexter, the great
real-estate millionaire of Detroit, has been placed beneath the social
wing of Lady Wyndcliffe, whose intimate circle of bright young people
is so well-known, and who gives such exclusive dances in the season.
Miss Dexter is a relation of Colonel Frank Dexter, who was the chief
adviser to General Hughes during the Great War.”

Etta’s press-agent had been at work. He was a small, withered little
old journalist who lived in a single room out at Balham and whose
old-fashioned landlady took pity upon him. And yet in Fleet Street his
name was one to conjure with. He made or marred reputations, because
he knew exactly how to distribute dope to his pals in the various
Fleet Street inns.

He could always slip a Treasury note into the hands of an outside
gossip-writer on a daily newspaper, wrapped up in a paragraph. Thus
who could tell of the “graft” when next day the important journal
appeared with a photograph of a nobody who was being secretly boomed?
So it is that, in this age of publicity, nobody of any note, and
nobodies of any note, as well as the somebodies who count, from the
highest to the lowest, can afford to neglect the offers of a
press-agent.

In our present age of advertising, real worth hardly counts, and merit
is valueless in any walk of life without a Press boom behind it, until
the best-hated man or woman now becomes the most talked of and
popular. Hence one dismisses most of the social gossip of the
newspapers as mere inconsistent twaddle, which interests illiterate
suburbia and benighted country cousins, who to-day are not so
benighted as the directors of our Press seem to think. Once the Press
created public opinion, but, thank heaven! the public nowadays thinks
for itself--the public of whatever political views.

Sibell read the paragraph about Etta’s latest capture and smiled
inwardly, wondering how much it had cost the ambitious American
father. It was no affair of hers, for she had known such cases each
season. After all, the title “Countess” covers such a multitude of
judgment summonses and “orders of the Court.”

Nevertheless Sibell was ignorant that, though she led such a quiet,
uneventful life, with Edith Pearman as her companion, very often the
dark figure of a man would be in the vicinity of the Guest House after
dark, waiting for hours sometimes, even from early evening, and often
through the long dark watches of the night. The figure would draw back
and conceal itself when any constable chanced to come along after
midnight, yet the man was often there, watching the windows of Miss
Dare’s room as though keeping a constant vigil upon the old-world
house.

It was a haunting shadow, but it was there always--the shadow of evil
or of good.

But those who lived in the newly-decorated house were completely in
ignorance of that keen pair of eyes which kept an ever-vigilant watch.




 CHAPTER XXXII.
 THE MONKEY-GOD

Early one stormy morning, about two o’clock, when the rain beat upon
the window-panes, Charlesworth and the smart chauffeur, Budd, were
seated together in complete darkness in the long dining-room. They sat
but uttered no word. Indeed, the only signs of anyone being present
were two red ends of cigarettes, for both were smoking.

Sitting in silence with drawn blinds, they had been there since the
house had been closed at eleven, none of the occupants aware that they
were keeping a night vigil, or that they had done so for many previous
nights.

So as not to show any light, they lit one cigarette by the end of the
other, and smoked on without a single word. Continual smoking kept
them from dozing, as night after night they had sat there, each with a
bottle of beer at his elbow, until dawn, when they would noiselessly
retire. This strange procedure had been repeated nightly by the two
men ever since they had entered Sibell’s service.

Suddenly there sounded a noise in the farther corner of the dark
room--a slight hiss, which caused both men to spring to their feet.
The low hiss, as though of some reptile or large insect, was repeated
twice.

“Careful!” whispered Charlesworth to his fellow-servant. “Not a
sound!”

“Right,” was Budd’s whispered reply, and, opening the well-oiled door,
they both crept in their socks out into the hall, where, at the top of
the staircase, they saw a small, dull-green light moving very slowly,
until it stopped at the head of the stairs. By its light they could
distinguish something moving--a gloved human hand, it appeared,
holding something that shone--a knife. The hand seemed to be carefully
scraping or picking the handsome carved mahogany post which held the
heavy balustrade.

For fully three minutes the two watchers, warned of some intrusion by
the electrical contrivance which had produced the curious hissing in
the dining-room, looked on in surprise. That tiny green light was
distinctly weird and uncanny.

Presently the light moved from the head of the staircase slowly along
the corridor to an end room, which Sibell had made into her own little
den. Its door stood open. The faint, dull light of the night sky, the
blind not having been drawn, revealed that the green light was carried
by a man bent and short of stature, a man who wore surgical rubber
gloves, and evidently also felt slippers, as his feet fell silently.
Creeping behind him, the two men watched him advance to Sibell’s
writing-table, upon which he placed his little green lamp, with an
open penknife. Then, selecting her fountain-pen from the silver tray
of the handsome inkstand, he carefully unscrewed the cap. It was a
self-filler of unusual type. Taking from his pocket a small phial of
some liquid, which appeared to be ink, he inserted the nib of the pen
and quickly filled it. Then, with gloved hands, he carefully plunged
the whole pen into the inky liquid, and afterwards screwed on the cap,
and then replaced it just as he had found it.

Upon the polished silver tray he allowed a few drops of ink to fall,
and at the same time he rubbed, with his rubber glove, a quantity of
the liquid upon the polished writing-table.

It was as though he was intent upon polishing the whole table with
ink.

As the stranger turned, Charlesworth suddenly flashed his bright
electric torch full upon his face, causing him to stagger back in
fright, while at that same second, Budd switched on the electric light
in the room.

“We are officers of the Criminal Investigation Department, and I
arrest you, John Dare, _alias_ Bettinson, and lots of other names,
upon charges of wilful murder,” Charlesworth said in his deep voice.

“You--you arrest me!” screamed the wily, white-haired old fellow.
“Arrest me! And in my own house! I defy you! Touch me if you dare, and
from the slightest scratch with this knife you’ll die!” And with a
demoniacal grin he held up his little pen-knife, which he had used
upon the stairs.

Next instant Detective-Sergeant Budd threw himself upon him, seizing
the hand which held the fatal blade, while Inspector Charlesworth
strove to get the dangerous knife from his hand. But the old man, in
that demented state, screamed and yelled like some wild animal,
fighting with the ferocity of a tiger, twisting and swaying as he
tried to wound one or the other of his captors.

“This house is mine--mine! You understand?” he shrieked wildly. “My
brother Henry should have left it to me! It is mine by law! All these
years I’ve waited and have been in it, and now those who usurp what is
my property--all who dare enter here--must die. They die
mysteriously--of--of heart disease!” And then he gave vent to a most
hideous screeching laugh that showed him to have suddenly become
raving in his lunacy.

To secure him was nearly impossible, and as Sibell and two maids,
awakened in fright, appeared in their dressing-gowns, Charlesworth
turned to his mistress, and said:

“Excuse me, miss, we’ve caught a burglar! Will you please telephone to
the police-station at once, and simply say that Charlesworth wants
immediate assistance here? They’ll know.”

At hearing those words, the homicidal maniac made a renewed and most
desperate struggle, still holding the dangerous knife in a grip of
steel. Then, of a sudden, Charlesworth, in his efforts to obtain
possession of it, drew his hand so close to the prisoner’s neck that
the point of the blade entered just beneath his right jaw.

“God!” he shrieked, realizing what had happened. “I--I’ll die! You
damned fiends--you--you----” But slowly, a few seconds later, he
collapsed, while the knife fell from his nerveless fingers. “This
place is mine!--mine by inheritance!” he wailed. “Henry had no right
to it--never had,” he went on. “I was born here, and--and I--I die
here! But I’ve cheated you all. Of the Malays I learnt of their
wonderful _ipoh gadong_, the poison of which, by a tiny scratch, or a
little beneath the finger-nails, causes certain death--the time-poison
which no Western doctor can yet detect--how its effect can be delayed
for a day, a week, or a month. I know! I alone hold the secret of the
old Bomor Enche Jalal of Kelentan. I brought the ingredients to
England with me. And you sha’n’t know them--no, never shall know them.
Their secret is mine, and I alone will hold it!”

In the arms of the two detectives the old fellow became limp and
inert, so that they placed him upon the couch, where he lay until
Sibell, naturally very excited, ran back from the telephone.

Suddenly old John Dare started, and with his thin, upraised hands
began a series of wild incantations which, though nobody understood,
were undoubtedly in Malay, for he called upon the langsuir, which is,
to the natives, a terrible female vampire who afflicts only brides. He
imitated the repulsive laugh--“_haw-haw haw-ho_”--of the Malayan
fish-owl, or “ghost-bird,” while time after time he invoked the anger
of Hantu Doman, his deity, the Monkey-God.

To those present it was only gibberish, but apparently he made use of
the same incantations as he did in the presence of poor Farmer before
his mysterious death.

“Did you hear that?” asked Inspector Charlesworth to Budd. “Take a
note of the name of that poison--_ipoh gadong_.” Then he turned to
Sibell, and warned her not to touch her fountain-pen or the balustrade
of the stairs.

“Later I’ll explain all to you, miss,” the police officer added. “It
is a great consolation to us that, after all, we’ve caught ‘The
Chameleon.’ We know that they called him that in France, where he
committed at least two murders by means of his poison secret, and,
after trial at the Assizes of the Seine, he was confined in the French
criminal lunatic asylum at Toulouse for life. But he escaped, and
arrived in London, where he’s been earning a precarious living in the
City on account of his knowledge of the Malay language. And so----”

His explanation was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the
inspector from Hampton and two constables.

“Fixed up ‘The Chameleon’ all right, sir?” asked the rosy-faced
officer, taking in the situation at a glance.

“Yes, Fowler. All is O.K. Caught him red-handed, and he’s poisoned
himself. I don’t expect he’ll live long. Good job for him if he
doesn’t, eh?”

“You swine!” whined the prostrate man suddenly. “Live long! I don’t
care how long I live! This house is mine. They sold its contents, but
those who helped to do it suffered!” And he yelled like a maniac. “The
man in charge dared to lay a hand upon me, and he died. The doctor who
was to marry the girl who took my inheritance from me had a narrow
escape, because--because I timed it wrong. I was a fool to do so--a
fool--_fool_!”

The police officers looked at each other in silence, while
Charlesworth in a kind voice suggested that Sibell and the maids might
return to their rooms.

This they did, when, a quarter of an hour later, the prisoner was
removed on the ambulance to the police-station, but on the way his
heart failed, so that on arrival he was found to be dead.

Before midday the fountain-pen, with its infected ink, and some fine
splinters of mahogany from the carved head-post of the banisters, were
in the hands of the Home Office pathologist, who, after careful
analysis extending over the next four days, certified that the most
dangerous and most virulent poison had been applied.

A most scrupulous examination was afterwards made of the house of
evil, where it was discovered that “The Chameleon,” a nickname given
him in the asylum at Toulouse because of his amazingly clever
disguises, his strange adventures, and his sound knowledge of
medicine, and as such registered in the criminal archives at the Paris
Sûreté, had, even before the death of his brother Henry, been in the
habit of entering the house at night with his green light, and in his
demented state he had often sat and enjoyed himself through the night
hours in those long-closed rooms, imagining himself the possessor of
the long-closed-up house.

His mode of entry into the place was discovered on the evening of the
day of his death.

When Inspector Charlesworth was faced with the puzzling problem, he
most naturally thought of the shut-up wine-cellar. The door of this
they found ajar, and, with Budd, they struggled past a number of
well-filled bins of old port and sherry to an exit which consisted of
a rotting wooden lattice covered by brambles. They struggled through
these, to find themselves ascending some moss-grown stone steps, after
which, after another struggle, and tearing their clothes, they found
themselves in a thicket on the other side of the adjoining garden!

By such means had the lunatic brother of Henry Dare--who for years
lodged with a dear, deaf old widow at Molesey--gained access to the
old house that had once been his home, and of which he still, in his
demented state, felt that he held possession.

To the public the actual truth never leaked out. It was better so. The
coroner, after a consultation at the Home Office, held his inquiry
without the aid of a jury, and all the world was told was that at a
house at Hampton Court a burglar had been captured by the police, and
that the shock to him proved so great that, on being conveyed to the
police-station, he had died of heart disease.




 CHAPTER XXXIII.
 CONCLUSION

If the reader cares to take the trouble to cross the wide green at
Hampton Court, close to the fine old red-brick turreted palace, with
its wonderful old-world flower-gardens, he may see the spick-and-span
Guest House of the great Cardinal standing back amid the ancient
trees, as it has done ever since the days when Anne Boleyn visited it
with Henry VIII.

Of the amazing career of “The Chameleon” nobody is aware save Dr. and
Mrs. Otway--who now live so happily there--the police, of course,
Routh, the old gambler, Lady Etta, and the adventurous Ashe. From all
others the secret of the evil which pervaded the place has been
strictly withheld.

The young couple are highly popular. Brinsley, having disposed of his
practice and his corner house at Golder’s Green, is looking out for
one in the West End, determined not to live upon his wife’s money.

The reconciliation between the pair was effected by no less a person
than Gussie Gretton himself. He admired, perhaps even he loved,
Sibell, for he would, indeed, have readily paid the fat commission
which the adventuress demanded. But, realizing his mistake, as well as
Sibell’s devotion to Otway, he one day went North, and, forcing
himself upon Otway, described to him frankly and honestly all that had
occurred.

At first Brinsley indignantly refused to see Sibell, whereupon Gretton
turned to him reproachfully, saying:

“In that case, Otway, you’re not fair to the woman who loves you. Do
give her one chance to explain with her own lips. I’ve known her
longer than you have, and I’ve a right to appeal to you for her sake.
Surely you can realize the hell she’s gone through since that
unfortunate night? Come to London with me. Do.”

Otway remained obdurate, while Gretton, on his part, again declared
that the meeting had not been planned, and nothing had occurred
between them which he had not described. He admitted kissing her
against her will, and for that he deeply and most humbly apologized.

That night, after obtaining his whilom rival’s promise to reconsider
his decision, Gretton returned to town, while the early train next
morning carried Brinsley to the side of the girl to whom he was so
wholeheartedly devoted.

Explanations in that long, white-enamelled drawing-room did not take
very long, for in an instant they were clasped in each other’s ready
arms, he raining hot kisses upon her lips, while she sobbed for joy.

That night Sibell wrote to her aunt telling her the glad news, which,
of course, created the greatest disappointment among those who had so
cunningly plotted to part the pair, and so obtain a considerable sum
of money if their clever scheme had been successful. Though Sibell was
unaware of it, Lady Wyndcliffe had secretly been introduced by Ashe to
John Dare, who represented himself as a Mr. Pearson, manager of the
electric lighting firm which was fitting up the Guest House, and in
that capacity he invited her to bring her American friend, Mr.
Kimball, to see over the interesting old place.

This she did on the following day, when, without doubt, the homicidal
old maniac, in one of his chameleon-like disguises, played some
devilry with that deadly liquid in his possession, whereby Etta’s
unsuspicious companion had become infected with that most deadly of
all poisons, which he had so concocted as to produce a fatal effect
within a week--as it had done, in mid-Atlantic. Sibell did not know
till long afterwards that Scotland Yard was already on the track of
Ashe and Etta, and that on the morning in Berne, Inspector
Charlesworth had been in the adjoining room and had overheard the
plot. It was he who, disguised as a cavalier, had gone to the masked
ball at Gurnigel and warned her.

John Dare had revealed to nobody either his real name, or the secret
manner in which he removed those who invaded what he had determined
was his domain by right. Etta and Ashe only knew that he held some
strange and astounding secret.

Etta Wyndcliffe, as soon as she learned the truth, feared to be
implicated in the affair, and therefore left at once for Kenya Colony,
where Wyndcliffe, ignorant of everything, of course, joined her, while
Albert Ashe, equally fearing exposure--for at his suggestion Etta had
taken Kimball to the Guest House, “to see if the evil would fall upon
him,” as he put it--escaped to the Continent, where he still remains.

Only by the analysis of the dangerous secret held by “The Chameleon”
of the _ipoh gadong_,[1] which is mixed with the inspissated juices
of two jungle vines and the poisonous spines of certain fishes, have
modern toxicologists been forced to admit the existence of an actual
time-poison that can be absorbed through the skin, which has been
strenuously denied, ever since mediæval days, by all chemists and
pathologists.

Sibell, indeed, had a most narrow escape, for had she innocently
handled her fountain-pen, she would undoubtedly have been stricken
dead by the ink coming into contact with her fingers.

Hence men working in wonder in rubber gloves, after mysterious
warnings, spent weeks in cleaning down the big house a second time,
and in removing and planing down smoothly the sharp splinters of
infected mahogany upon the big carved post at the head of the stairs,
which had no doubt been responsible for those imperceptible pricks and
scratches which had infected the unfortunate ones with the deadliest
poison known to-day. When studying the problem, Otway, himself deeply
interested in toxicology, suddenly realised the reason why women
visitors to the house had escaped. The explanation was simple. They
had touched nothing which the midnight intruder, with his green lamp,
had with his satanic cunning arranged; for they wore gloves!

The public have not hitherto learnt the truth as here recorded, nor
have they known of the strange history and astounding exploits of the
criminal lunatic who swept away his imaginary enemies in that subtle
and ingenious manner, yet for several years the French police had kept
the weird old fellow under surveillance, because upon him rested the
suspicion of at least two cases of secret poisoning--one at Bordeaux
and the other in Paris--yet so elusive was he, and so chameleon-like
in his constant changes, that the Sûreté could never obtain direct
evidence.

His presence at Cookham was certainly with some evil intent against
Sibell, but his young fellow-guest at the Ferry Hotel was really an
astute young detective-sergeant of the T Division of Metropolitan
Police, whose watchfulness was later taken up by the well-known
officer, Inspector Charlesworth of Scotland Yard, and
Detective-Sergeant Budd.

Sibell was deeply sorry when her two faithful menservants were
compelled to so suddenly resign. By their constant vigilance her life
had been spared, while Brinsley’s return brought her all the happiness
for which she had craved.

At the time of penning this record of one of the strangest dramas of
London’s hectic life that had ever been recorded in the annals of
Scotland Yard, Sibell’s old hunchback guardian, the optimistic Gordon
Routh, lives in three comfortable rooms on the upper floor of the
Guest House, and is usually immersed in the intricate problems of the
chances at roulette and the proving of the infallible “system” which
he has invented to his own satisfaction.

The big file now reposing in the criminal archives of Scotland Yard,
and the equally large records at the bureau of the Sûreté in Paris,
record the career of John Dare, rubber planter in Malaya, who became a
criminal lunatic. They show no parallel in the history of crime.
Against him the infamous Neil Cream, with his tiny poison pills, which
he administered to the unfortunates of Lambeth, fades into
insignificance, for John Dare, of the house of D’Aire, had brought to
London the secret of the one terrible Eastern time-poison of which
toxicologists had now learnt by the analysis of that little phial of
ink and poison found upon him after death. The formula of it is to-day
kept the most profound secret by those who know, lest it might be used
any day by enemies who desire to take human life with perfect immunity
from arrest.

The many typewritten pages which constitute the police record of John
Dare, criminal lunatic, _alias_ Bettinson, Pearson, and many other
names, lying in the archives at Scotland Yard--a carbon copy of which
reposes in the great department of criminal records in
Paris--concludes as follows:


 “John Dare, _alias_ Bettinson.--One of the cleverest, most
 elusive, and plausible assassins ever reported to the international
 police. Was in possession of a secret poison hitherto unknown to
 medical science, and his known crimes in England and France numbered
 eight. So alert and adroit was he in changing his facial expression,
 together with his attire and his calling, in order to wipe out those
 whom he believed to be intruders into his rightful possessions, that,
 by his associates and also by the police, he became known all over the
 Continent as ‘The Chameleon.’”


 THE END




 ENDNOTE

[1] Author’s Note.--The actual mode of preparation and formula I have
purposely omitted, for most obvious reasons.




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. armchair/arm-chair, card
sharpers/card-sharpers, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Punctuation: fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings and some
missing/invisible periods.

Convert the footnote to an endnote.

[Chapter VI]

Change “and an epergne of great chrysanthemums as a centre-_plece_” to
_piece_.

“Ashe, the discreet, _obsequlous_ butler, a clean-shaven man” to
_obsequious_.

[Chapter IX]

“and hence are _sacrified_ for firewood early in their growth” to
_sacrificed_.

[Chapter XXVI]

(“It is most _unforunate_, isn’t it?” Then, turning) to _unfortunate_.

[Chapter XXVII]

“fair-haired débutante, to be sold in the _marrige_ market” to
_marriage_.

[Chapter XXXI]

“uneventful life, with Edith Pearman as her _companian_” to
_companion_.

 [End of text]






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