Chapter Twenty Two.In Defiance of the Law.The discovery of the horror concealed within that closed room opened out an entirely fresh development of the mystery. On discussing it with Boyd after we had stealthily left the house we were in complete agreement that the dead man must have either been in hiding there, or else, being an imbecile, had been kept under restraint. The fact of the door being barred on the outside strengthened Boyd’s belief in the latter theory, while I made the suggestion that he might have been imprisoned and died of starvation.“No,” Boyd answered, “I don’t agree with you there, for it is quite plain that Lady Glaslyn must have been aware of his presence, and perhaps, indeed, arranged the room. There is every evidence that he was supplied with food at intervals, and cooked it himself, which shows that, even if an invalid, he was sufficiently active. My idea is that he may have been some relation whose demented condition her ladyship wished to keep from her friends and other members of the family, and that having died suddenly she was compelled to lock and seal the door, dreading the publicity of a coroner’s inquiry, when the truth must have been made public.”“True,” I said. “That’s, of course, a very feasible theory. But if she were in the secret, Eva, too, must have known.”“Of course,” he said. “She can tell us everything if she chooses. It’s a pity that the dead man’s face is unrecognisable.”“Again, is it not strange that we should have found in there one of those same cards?”“Yes, rather,” responded my friend. “But at present it is useless to advance all kinds of wild theories. We must stick closely to facts if we would succeed. We have to-night made certain discoveries, startling enough in all conscience, and among them have elucidated the secret which Lady Glaslyn has hidden from every one. Now we must seek to discover the motive which caused her to apply that seal to the door, as well as ascertaining the reason her daughter has that mysterious drug among her possessions, together with the photographs of the two unknown victims.”“I wonder how long it is since the man died in that room,” I said. “What a horrible existence he must have led shut up there, gaining all his light and air through a broken pane of glass. He was studious, at any rate, judging from the character of the books with which he had been supplied.”“And a linguist too,” Boyd remarked, remembering that the books were in other languages besides English.“Strange that the curiosity of the servants was not aroused,” I said. “They would be certain to wonder what was in a room sealed up as that is.”“To satisfy them would be easy enough,” the detective answered. “Her ladyship undoubtedly told them that certain family heirlooms, old furniture, or something, was stowed away there, and that the seal had been placed upon them by the trustees, or somebody. Trust a woman for an excuse,” and he smiled grimly.We walked on together for some time in complete silence. The young day grew wider and brighter and redder in the sky. We had passed through Twickenham, and now, in the dawn, were making our way towards Richmond, whence we could catch the early workmen’s train to Waterloo.“You must keep your friend Cleugh in entire ignorance of all this. Tell him you’ve been out to visit some friends, say at Ealing or Uxbridge, or somewhere, and that they compelled you to stay the night. If he were to know, the whole result of our investigations might be rendered abortive.”“Of course I’ll do as you wish,” I answered. “But I can’t for the life of me see why you entertain any suspicion of Dick. He’s been all along eager and ready to assist me to clear up the mystery. To publish the details of the curious affair seems his one object.” Boyd smiled again with veiled sarcasm.“And a very interesting story he’ll have for publication, it appears to me,” he said, laughing. Then he added after a second’s pause, “One of the oddest facts in the whole affair is that the pair we found dead in Phillimore Place have never been missed by their friends.”“Or the dead man at The Hollies, for the matter of that,” I added.“Yes,” he said in dubious tone. “There are yet some facts which we must learn ere we can piece the queer puzzle together and read the whole. Only then can we discover who was the man whom Lady Glaslyn has so carefully hidden. It’s a devilish funny business, to say the least.”“Has it occurred to you that she may have left not intending to return?” I asked.“Well, no,” he responded. “I scarcely think she has flown, or her daughter would have secured the contents of her escritoire. She evidently believes her secret quite safe, and is therefore entirely fearless.” The Richmond Road with its many trees was pleasant in that hour when the clear rose-flush of dawn was still in the sky, and as we walked the cool wind rose fragrant with the smell of the wet grass, refreshing after the foetid atmosphere of that closed room and its gruesome occupant.We chatted on, discussing the startling discoveries we had made, he giving me certain instructions, until we got to the station and entered a compartment. The latter being crowded with workmen, further conversation on the subject was precluded.Soon after six I returned to Gray’s Inn, and making an excuse to Dick for my absence, snatched an hour’s sleep before going down to my office. My heart was hard; my blood fire. Fate had been merciless.“I began to think something had happened, old chap,” Dick had said when I had entered his room and awakened him. He sat up in bed and looked at me rather strangely, I thought. Then he added: “You don’t seem as though you’ve had much sleep, wherever you’ve been.”In my excitement I had quite forgotten that my clothes were dirty and torn, and my face unwashed, and I fancied that his pointed remark caused a slight flush to rise to my cheeks.How I performed my duties that morning I scarcely knew, for my brain was in a whirl with the amazing discoveries of the past night, I loved Eva, yet the contents of those concealed drawers were sufficient in themselves to convince Boyd of her guilt. A fearful and perpetual dread seized me lest she should be arrested. Boyd’s method of work was, I knew, always bold and decisive. A detective, to be successful, must act without hesitation. In this affair he had obtained evidence which, from every point of view, proved but one fact, and one alone—her guilt. Indeed, I now remembered with bitterness how she had to me openly declared herself guilty; how she had prophesied that one day I should hate all mention of her name. Did it not seem quite clear, too, that this very drug which I had found in the small wooden box, the drug which had been instantly fatal to the poor brute upon which we tried it, was the same which had been administered to me by her hand?When I thought of that I felt glad that I had assisted my friend of Scotland Yard, and that with my own hands had unearthed evidence which must lead to her conviction. Her arrest was, I knew from my friend’s remarks, only a matter of days, perhaps, indeed, of hours.“You can’t now seek to shield Miss Glaslyn,” he had remarked when we had been waiting for the train on Richmond platform. “The proofs are far too strong. If we could only discover the author of those type-written letters we would be able to find out what the Silence refers to, and to move with much more certainty. As we can’t, we must fix our theory firmly and act boldly upon it.”“Do you mean that you intend to apply for a warrant against her?” I inquired, dismayed.“We shall obtain one against somebody, but who it may be of course depends entirely upon the result of our subsequent investigations. People don’t keep bodies locked up in their houses without some very strong motive.”It now struck me as exceedingly strange why Eva should have been so anxious to prevent me revisiting Riverdene. She had hinted that the Blains were my enemies, yet was it not more likely that my presence reminded her too vividly of her sin, and she also feared the vengeance of Mary Blain? There was undoubtedly some deep motive underlying this effort to prevent me visiting the Blains, but as I reflected upon it I failed to decide what it might be. She had spoken of it as though it were for my benefit, and as if she had my welfare at heart, yet I could not fail to detect how hollow was the sham, for the Blains were my friends of long standing, and since my visit at Mary’s request my welcome had always been a most cordial one.Mary had certainly no cause for jealousy, for she and I had on several occasions, when alone on the river, spoken of the past. She had, indeed, ridiculed my boyish love for her, and observed that we were both older and more discreet nowadays. I had long been assured by her words and her attitude that her affection for me—if she had really ever entertained any—had entirely passed away.No, I could not understand Eva’s present attitude. It was entirely an enigma. She seemed filled with some nameless terror, the reason of which our discoveries seemed to prove up to the hilt.Day followed day, each to me full of anxiety and bewilderment. On parting from Boyd he had told me to remain in patience until he communicated with me. I was not to return to Riverdene, neither was I to mention a single word to Dick regarding recent occurrences.I wandered from end to end of London day after day, reporting the events which daily crop up in the Metropolis. It seemed to me as if those days would never end. I saw nothing but the face of Eva. The world which had seemed to me so beautiful had changed; Heaven was cruel. It created loveliness only to pollute and deform it afterwards. Out of my dreams I was brought face to face with facts that sickened me. The old landmarks of my faith were gone. Whatever happy hopefulness of nature I possessed was crushed. I was bewildered and sick at heart. Yet through it all I could not thrust away from me Eva’s wondrous beauty. Her form, her gaze, her smile, her sigh—I could think of nothing else. Yet the mockery of it all stung me to despair, and despair is man’s most frequent visitor.A week thus passed. I saw her in the air, in the clouds, everywhere; her voice rang in my ears; she was so lovely—and yet she was so vile—a poisoner!One afternoon I had returned to Gray’s Inn unusually early, about three o’clock, put on my old lounge-coat, a river “blazer,” and sat down to write up an interview for publication next day, when I heard a ring at the door, voices outside the room, and a few moments later Mrs Joad entered, saying—“’Ere’s a lady wants to see you, sir.”“A lady?” I exclaimed, turning quickly in my chair. “Ask her in.”I rose, brushing down my hair with my hand, and next moment found myself face to face with Eva.She advanced with her hand outstretched and a smile upon her face, that countenance that was ever before me in my day-dreams.“How fortunate I am to find you in,” she exclaimed, half breathless after the ascent of the stairs. “I’ve been to your office, and they told me that you were probably at home.”“It is I who am fortunate,” I answered, laughing gaily, placing the armchair for her and drawing out a little oaken footstool, a relic from some bygone generation of men who had tenanted those grimy old rooms.With a sigh she seated herself, and then for the first time I noticed the deathly pallor of her cheeks. Even her thick veil did not conceal it. She was in black, neat as usual, but her skirt was unbrushed and dusty, and her hair was just a trifle awry, as though she had been travelling about some hours.“I have called upon you here for the first and for the last time,” she said in a broken voice, looking seriously across to me, as the unwonted tears sprang into her eyes.“The last time!” I echoed. “What do you mean?”“I have come to wish you farewell,” she said in a low, faltering voice. “I am leaving London. My mother and I are going abroad.”“Abroad? Where?” I cried, dismayed.“My mother’s health is not good, and the doctor has ordered her to the South immediately. He says that she must never return to this climate, because it will hasten her malady to a fatal termination. Therefore, in future we must be exiles.” She was looking straight into my face as she spoke, and those great wondrous eyes of hers that I had believed to be so pure and honest never wavered. “I leave to-morrow and join her,” she added.“Then she has already gone!” I exclaimed, the truth at once flashing upon me that Lady Glaslyn had actually fled.“Yes. The doctor has so frightened her that I could not induce her to stay and pack. I shall join her in Paris,” she explained quite calmly. “There is no help for it. We must part.”“But surely,” I said in desperation, “you will not leave me thus? You will return to England sometimes.”“I really don’t know,” she answered in a strained, hoarse voice.“At least you will give me hope that some day you will be my wife, Eva,” I said, tenderly grasping her hand, which seemed limp and trembling. “You know how fondly I love you, how—”I started quickly and turned, puzzled at the unusual sound of voices, without finishing the sentence. One voice I recognised speaking in deep tones to Mrs Joad, and dropping the hand I held I rushed out, closing the door behind me.As I did so, I came face to face with Boyd, accompanied by two plain-clothes officers.“We’ve followed her here,” he explained. “She means to get away abroad, therefore we must now execute the warrant. I regret it, for your sake.”A loud piercing shriek from within told me that she had overheard those fateful words.“No,” I cried. “By Heaven! you shan’t arrest her!” and I resolutely barred his passage to the inner room. “As I love her you shall never enter there! She shall never be taken as a common criminal!”
The discovery of the horror concealed within that closed room opened out an entirely fresh development of the mystery. On discussing it with Boyd after we had stealthily left the house we were in complete agreement that the dead man must have either been in hiding there, or else, being an imbecile, had been kept under restraint. The fact of the door being barred on the outside strengthened Boyd’s belief in the latter theory, while I made the suggestion that he might have been imprisoned and died of starvation.
“No,” Boyd answered, “I don’t agree with you there, for it is quite plain that Lady Glaslyn must have been aware of his presence, and perhaps, indeed, arranged the room. There is every evidence that he was supplied with food at intervals, and cooked it himself, which shows that, even if an invalid, he was sufficiently active. My idea is that he may have been some relation whose demented condition her ladyship wished to keep from her friends and other members of the family, and that having died suddenly she was compelled to lock and seal the door, dreading the publicity of a coroner’s inquiry, when the truth must have been made public.”
“True,” I said. “That’s, of course, a very feasible theory. But if she were in the secret, Eva, too, must have known.”
“Of course,” he said. “She can tell us everything if she chooses. It’s a pity that the dead man’s face is unrecognisable.”
“Again, is it not strange that we should have found in there one of those same cards?”
“Yes, rather,” responded my friend. “But at present it is useless to advance all kinds of wild theories. We must stick closely to facts if we would succeed. We have to-night made certain discoveries, startling enough in all conscience, and among them have elucidated the secret which Lady Glaslyn has hidden from every one. Now we must seek to discover the motive which caused her to apply that seal to the door, as well as ascertaining the reason her daughter has that mysterious drug among her possessions, together with the photographs of the two unknown victims.”
“I wonder how long it is since the man died in that room,” I said. “What a horrible existence he must have led shut up there, gaining all his light and air through a broken pane of glass. He was studious, at any rate, judging from the character of the books with which he had been supplied.”
“And a linguist too,” Boyd remarked, remembering that the books were in other languages besides English.
“Strange that the curiosity of the servants was not aroused,” I said. “They would be certain to wonder what was in a room sealed up as that is.”
“To satisfy them would be easy enough,” the detective answered. “Her ladyship undoubtedly told them that certain family heirlooms, old furniture, or something, was stowed away there, and that the seal had been placed upon them by the trustees, or somebody. Trust a woman for an excuse,” and he smiled grimly.
We walked on together for some time in complete silence. The young day grew wider and brighter and redder in the sky. We had passed through Twickenham, and now, in the dawn, were making our way towards Richmond, whence we could catch the early workmen’s train to Waterloo.
“You must keep your friend Cleugh in entire ignorance of all this. Tell him you’ve been out to visit some friends, say at Ealing or Uxbridge, or somewhere, and that they compelled you to stay the night. If he were to know, the whole result of our investigations might be rendered abortive.”
“Of course I’ll do as you wish,” I answered. “But I can’t for the life of me see why you entertain any suspicion of Dick. He’s been all along eager and ready to assist me to clear up the mystery. To publish the details of the curious affair seems his one object.” Boyd smiled again with veiled sarcasm.
“And a very interesting story he’ll have for publication, it appears to me,” he said, laughing. Then he added after a second’s pause, “One of the oddest facts in the whole affair is that the pair we found dead in Phillimore Place have never been missed by their friends.”
“Or the dead man at The Hollies, for the matter of that,” I added.
“Yes,” he said in dubious tone. “There are yet some facts which we must learn ere we can piece the queer puzzle together and read the whole. Only then can we discover who was the man whom Lady Glaslyn has so carefully hidden. It’s a devilish funny business, to say the least.”
“Has it occurred to you that she may have left not intending to return?” I asked.
“Well, no,” he responded. “I scarcely think she has flown, or her daughter would have secured the contents of her escritoire. She evidently believes her secret quite safe, and is therefore entirely fearless.” The Richmond Road with its many trees was pleasant in that hour when the clear rose-flush of dawn was still in the sky, and as we walked the cool wind rose fragrant with the smell of the wet grass, refreshing after the foetid atmosphere of that closed room and its gruesome occupant.
We chatted on, discussing the startling discoveries we had made, he giving me certain instructions, until we got to the station and entered a compartment. The latter being crowded with workmen, further conversation on the subject was precluded.
Soon after six I returned to Gray’s Inn, and making an excuse to Dick for my absence, snatched an hour’s sleep before going down to my office. My heart was hard; my blood fire. Fate had been merciless.
“I began to think something had happened, old chap,” Dick had said when I had entered his room and awakened him. He sat up in bed and looked at me rather strangely, I thought. Then he added: “You don’t seem as though you’ve had much sleep, wherever you’ve been.”
In my excitement I had quite forgotten that my clothes were dirty and torn, and my face unwashed, and I fancied that his pointed remark caused a slight flush to rise to my cheeks.
How I performed my duties that morning I scarcely knew, for my brain was in a whirl with the amazing discoveries of the past night, I loved Eva, yet the contents of those concealed drawers were sufficient in themselves to convince Boyd of her guilt. A fearful and perpetual dread seized me lest she should be arrested. Boyd’s method of work was, I knew, always bold and decisive. A detective, to be successful, must act without hesitation. In this affair he had obtained evidence which, from every point of view, proved but one fact, and one alone—her guilt. Indeed, I now remembered with bitterness how she had to me openly declared herself guilty; how she had prophesied that one day I should hate all mention of her name. Did it not seem quite clear, too, that this very drug which I had found in the small wooden box, the drug which had been instantly fatal to the poor brute upon which we tried it, was the same which had been administered to me by her hand?
When I thought of that I felt glad that I had assisted my friend of Scotland Yard, and that with my own hands had unearthed evidence which must lead to her conviction. Her arrest was, I knew from my friend’s remarks, only a matter of days, perhaps, indeed, of hours.
“You can’t now seek to shield Miss Glaslyn,” he had remarked when we had been waiting for the train on Richmond platform. “The proofs are far too strong. If we could only discover the author of those type-written letters we would be able to find out what the Silence refers to, and to move with much more certainty. As we can’t, we must fix our theory firmly and act boldly upon it.”
“Do you mean that you intend to apply for a warrant against her?” I inquired, dismayed.
“We shall obtain one against somebody, but who it may be of course depends entirely upon the result of our subsequent investigations. People don’t keep bodies locked up in their houses without some very strong motive.”
It now struck me as exceedingly strange why Eva should have been so anxious to prevent me revisiting Riverdene. She had hinted that the Blains were my enemies, yet was it not more likely that my presence reminded her too vividly of her sin, and she also feared the vengeance of Mary Blain? There was undoubtedly some deep motive underlying this effort to prevent me visiting the Blains, but as I reflected upon it I failed to decide what it might be. She had spoken of it as though it were for my benefit, and as if she had my welfare at heart, yet I could not fail to detect how hollow was the sham, for the Blains were my friends of long standing, and since my visit at Mary’s request my welcome had always been a most cordial one.
Mary had certainly no cause for jealousy, for she and I had on several occasions, when alone on the river, spoken of the past. She had, indeed, ridiculed my boyish love for her, and observed that we were both older and more discreet nowadays. I had long been assured by her words and her attitude that her affection for me—if she had really ever entertained any—had entirely passed away.
No, I could not understand Eva’s present attitude. It was entirely an enigma. She seemed filled with some nameless terror, the reason of which our discoveries seemed to prove up to the hilt.
Day followed day, each to me full of anxiety and bewilderment. On parting from Boyd he had told me to remain in patience until he communicated with me. I was not to return to Riverdene, neither was I to mention a single word to Dick regarding recent occurrences.
I wandered from end to end of London day after day, reporting the events which daily crop up in the Metropolis. It seemed to me as if those days would never end. I saw nothing but the face of Eva. The world which had seemed to me so beautiful had changed; Heaven was cruel. It created loveliness only to pollute and deform it afterwards. Out of my dreams I was brought face to face with facts that sickened me. The old landmarks of my faith were gone. Whatever happy hopefulness of nature I possessed was crushed. I was bewildered and sick at heart. Yet through it all I could not thrust away from me Eva’s wondrous beauty. Her form, her gaze, her smile, her sigh—I could think of nothing else. Yet the mockery of it all stung me to despair, and despair is man’s most frequent visitor.
A week thus passed. I saw her in the air, in the clouds, everywhere; her voice rang in my ears; she was so lovely—and yet she was so vile—a poisoner!
One afternoon I had returned to Gray’s Inn unusually early, about three o’clock, put on my old lounge-coat, a river “blazer,” and sat down to write up an interview for publication next day, when I heard a ring at the door, voices outside the room, and a few moments later Mrs Joad entered, saying—“’Ere’s a lady wants to see you, sir.”
“A lady?” I exclaimed, turning quickly in my chair. “Ask her in.”
I rose, brushing down my hair with my hand, and next moment found myself face to face with Eva.
She advanced with her hand outstretched and a smile upon her face, that countenance that was ever before me in my day-dreams.
“How fortunate I am to find you in,” she exclaimed, half breathless after the ascent of the stairs. “I’ve been to your office, and they told me that you were probably at home.”
“It is I who am fortunate,” I answered, laughing gaily, placing the armchair for her and drawing out a little oaken footstool, a relic from some bygone generation of men who had tenanted those grimy old rooms.
With a sigh she seated herself, and then for the first time I noticed the deathly pallor of her cheeks. Even her thick veil did not conceal it. She was in black, neat as usual, but her skirt was unbrushed and dusty, and her hair was just a trifle awry, as though she had been travelling about some hours.
“I have called upon you here for the first and for the last time,” she said in a broken voice, looking seriously across to me, as the unwonted tears sprang into her eyes.
“The last time!” I echoed. “What do you mean?”
“I have come to wish you farewell,” she said in a low, faltering voice. “I am leaving London. My mother and I are going abroad.”
“Abroad? Where?” I cried, dismayed.
“My mother’s health is not good, and the doctor has ordered her to the South immediately. He says that she must never return to this climate, because it will hasten her malady to a fatal termination. Therefore, in future we must be exiles.” She was looking straight into my face as she spoke, and those great wondrous eyes of hers that I had believed to be so pure and honest never wavered. “I leave to-morrow and join her,” she added.
“Then she has already gone!” I exclaimed, the truth at once flashing upon me that Lady Glaslyn had actually fled.
“Yes. The doctor has so frightened her that I could not induce her to stay and pack. I shall join her in Paris,” she explained quite calmly. “There is no help for it. We must part.”
“But surely,” I said in desperation, “you will not leave me thus? You will return to England sometimes.”
“I really don’t know,” she answered in a strained, hoarse voice.
“At least you will give me hope that some day you will be my wife, Eva,” I said, tenderly grasping her hand, which seemed limp and trembling. “You know how fondly I love you, how—”
I started quickly and turned, puzzled at the unusual sound of voices, without finishing the sentence. One voice I recognised speaking in deep tones to Mrs Joad, and dropping the hand I held I rushed out, closing the door behind me.
As I did so, I came face to face with Boyd, accompanied by two plain-clothes officers.
“We’ve followed her here,” he explained. “She means to get away abroad, therefore we must now execute the warrant. I regret it, for your sake.”
A loud piercing shriek from within told me that she had overheard those fateful words.
“No,” I cried. “By Heaven! you shan’t arrest her!” and I resolutely barred his passage to the inner room. “As I love her you shall never enter there! She shall never be taken as a common criminal!”
Chapter Twenty Three.Her Ladyship.Boyd, seeing my fierce determination, held back, a look of undisguised annoyance upon his face.“I have a duty to perform. I beg of you not to obstruct me, Mr Urwin,” he said coldly. “It is quite as unpleasant to me as to you.”“Unpleasant!” I echoed. “I tell you that you shall not arrest her,” and I stood firmly with my back to the door of my room.“Come,” he said, in a tone of persuasion. “This action of yours cannot benefit her in the least. She has made every preparation for flight. Her trunk is in the cloakroom at Charing Cross Station, and she means within an hour to get away to the Continent. Let me pass.”“I shall not,” I roared.“In that case I shall be compelled to use force, however much I regret it.”As he uttered these words the door was suddenly flung back, and I saw Eva’s tragic, almost funereal, figure in the opening. She was white to the lips, her countenance terribly wan and haggard.“Enough!” she cried hoarsely. “Let the police enter. I am ready,” and she tottered back, clutching at the corner of my writing-table for support.Her outward purity and innocence were a rare equipment for the committal of a crime. Who, indeed, would have suspected her of guile and intrigue? When Love is dead there is no God.We were standing together in my sitting-room, Boyd being our only companion. A dozen times I had implored her to speak the truth, but without avail. She stood pale and trembling, yet still silent before us. Terror held her dumb.“Those who turn King’s evidence obtain free pardon,” the detective gravely observed, speaking for the first time.She laughed a little to herself.“You might have striven for ever in vain to solve the mystery,” she answered at last, apparently bracing herself up for an effort. “Those who aimed that terrible blow, so swift and so fatal, were not the kind of persons to be ever caught napping. They never made a false move, and always took such elaborate precautions that to solve the enigma would be impossible to any one unacquainted with previous events.”Her breast rose and fell quickly in her wild agitation. She was stirred by emotion to the depths of her being.“I was weak and helpless,” she faltered. “God knows how I have suffered; how deep has been my repentance. Hear me to the end,” she urged, turning her fine eyes to mine. “Then, when I have told you my wretched if astounding story, Frank, judge me as you think fit—for I am yours.”“Speak!” I said anxiously. “My justice shall be tempered with mercy.”By that sentence she had acknowledged her love for me, but now I hesitated. She was accused of murder.“Then I must begin at the very beginning, for it is a long and most complicated story, a story of a deep-laid intrigue and conspiracy, and of a duplicity extraordinary,” she said, her thin, nerveless hand trembling in mine as I held her with my arm about her waist. “In the days when I had reached my sixteenth year I lived with my mother abroad, in Italy for the most part, because it was cheap, and further because my father, who had been guilty of certain shady transactions, had been compelled to fly from England. He had treated my mother shamefully, therefore they were separated, and mother and I lived economically in these cheap pensions in Florence and Rome which seem to exist as asylums for the well-bred needy. A few days after I was sixteen, while we were at an obscure pension in Siena, my mother took typhoid and died, leaving me absolutely alone in the world, and practically penniless. Nearly a year before we had received a letter from my father’s solicitors in London stating that he had died in poverty in Buenos Aires, therefore I was utterly alone. The position of a friendless girl on the Continent is always serious,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “Acting upon the advice of some English people in the pension I went to Florence and saw there the Consul-General, who not only gave me money from the British Relief Fund, which is supported by English residents in that city, but also interested himself actively upon my behalf and obtained for me a post as governess in a wealthy Italian family living near Bologna. In their service I remained nearly three years, until, by the death of the head of the house, the family became scattered, when I took a fresh engagement with a lady who advertised for an English companion. She was a Madame Damant, a good-looking woman of forty-five, whose father, I understood, had been Italian, and whose mother English. She spoke English quite as well as I did, and had a fine apartment in Florence, where she received a good deal, for she was well-known there. With the winter over we travelled first to Paris, where we stayed several months, and then to Switzerland. Our life was pleasant, as Madame had plenty of money and we always lived at the best hotels.”She paused and drew a long breath. There was a hardness about her mouth, and tears were in her eyes.“It was in Zurich that I had my first misgivings, for there one day in late autumn we were joined by a strange old gentleman, Hartmann by name, whom I understood was Madame’s brother, a curious old fellow, whose main object in life appeared to be the carrying out of certain scientific experiments. He remained with us in the same hotel for nearly a fortnight, during which time Madame, who was extremely well-educated, held frequent consultations with him upon scientific matters, until one day I was overjoyed when she announced that we were all three to go straight to London.”“Then the Lady Glaslyn at The Hollies was not your mother?” I gasped, profoundly amazed at this revelation.“I am about to explain,” she went on in a hard voice. “On the night before our departure from Zurich I chanced to pass the door of Madame’s bedroom after everybody had retired to rest, and seeing a light issuing from the keyhole was prompted by natural curiosity to peep within. What I saw was certainly strange. In one hand she was holding an unopened bottle of Benedictine liqueur upside down, while with the other she took a hypodermic syringe filled with some liquid, and with the long thin needle pierced the cork, then slowly, and with infinite care, she injected the liquid from the tiny glass syringe. Afterwards she withdrew the hollow needle, glanced at the parchment capsule beneath the light, and having satisfied herself that the puncture made was quite unnoticeable, she shook the bottle so as to thoroughly mix the injected liquid with the liqueur. Then I saw her wrap the bottle carefully in a number of towels and place it in her trunk. Next day, when packing, I glanced at the bottle with some curiosity, examining the parchment covering the cork, but so tiny had been the puncture that I failed to discover the hole. The parchment had, I think, been touched with gum, which had caused the tiny hole to close.”“That liqueur was evidently poisoned,” Boyd remarked, his brows knit in thought.“Yes,” she answered. “I have every reason to believe so, although the true state of affairs did not dawn upon me until long afterwards. When alone in our compartment in thewagon-litbetween Basle and Calais, Madame, however, made a very extraordinary proposal to me. She confessed that her husband had been made the scapegoat of some financial fraud in England and was in hiding somewhere near Paris, therefore, in going back, she feared that if she went under her right name—Damant—that the police would begin to make active inquiries regarding monsieur. She wished, she said, to avoid this and set up a house in some pleasant suburb of London, so as to have apied-à-terrein the country she so dearly loved. Now my mother was dead, and no friends in England knew her, so many years had she lived on the Continent, why should she not pass as Lady Glaslyn and I as her daughter? At first this proposal utterly staggered me, but when she pointed out how much more I would be respected as her daughter instead of her companion, and told me of the manner in which she intended to live—a manner befitting her assumed station—I at length gave my consent, for which she made me a present there and then of a very acceptable bank-note.”“Then that woman only posed as your mother!” I exclaimed. “She was not the real Lady Glaslyn?”“Certainly not,” answered my beloved frankly. “At first I was very indisposed to be a party to any such transaction, but she had shown me so many kindnesses, and had always been so generous, that I, a friendless girl, felt compelled to accede. Ah! if I had but known what lay behind all that outward show of good feeling and sympathy I would have cast her accursed money from me as I could cast the gold of Satan. I would rather have made matches for a starvation wage, or slaved at a shop-counter, than have remained one day longer beneath her roof. But she was full of cool ingenuity and marvellous cunning, and on my acceptance of this proposal instantly set to work to bind me further to secrecy. This was not difficult, alas! for I was entirely unsuspicious of treachery, and least of all of my generous friend and benefactor. After some search and many interviews with house-agents we found The Hollies, which she purchased, together with the furniture just as it stood, and ere long neighbours began to call upon us, and we soon entered local society. Many times in those dull winter days I pondered long and deeply upon what I had seen in Zurich, wondering for what reason she had so carefully prepared the bottle which had passed the customs at Charing Cross undiscovered, and still remained locked in the travelling-trunk, surrounded by the wrappings she had placed upon it.”“Was any of the liqueur given to any one?” asked Boyd grimly.Ere she could respond the door was thrown open, and Dick entered with Lily Lowry. He had, it transpired, gone that day and besought her forgiveness.In a single glance he realised what had occurred, and without a word he closed the door, and both stood in silence to listen to her statement.How strange a thing is this life of ours! We are in hell one hour, and in heaven the next.
Boyd, seeing my fierce determination, held back, a look of undisguised annoyance upon his face.
“I have a duty to perform. I beg of you not to obstruct me, Mr Urwin,” he said coldly. “It is quite as unpleasant to me as to you.”
“Unpleasant!” I echoed. “I tell you that you shall not arrest her,” and I stood firmly with my back to the door of my room.
“Come,” he said, in a tone of persuasion. “This action of yours cannot benefit her in the least. She has made every preparation for flight. Her trunk is in the cloakroom at Charing Cross Station, and she means within an hour to get away to the Continent. Let me pass.”
“I shall not,” I roared.
“In that case I shall be compelled to use force, however much I regret it.”
As he uttered these words the door was suddenly flung back, and I saw Eva’s tragic, almost funereal, figure in the opening. She was white to the lips, her countenance terribly wan and haggard.
“Enough!” she cried hoarsely. “Let the police enter. I am ready,” and she tottered back, clutching at the corner of my writing-table for support.
Her outward purity and innocence were a rare equipment for the committal of a crime. Who, indeed, would have suspected her of guile and intrigue? When Love is dead there is no God.
We were standing together in my sitting-room, Boyd being our only companion. A dozen times I had implored her to speak the truth, but without avail. She stood pale and trembling, yet still silent before us. Terror held her dumb.
“Those who turn King’s evidence obtain free pardon,” the detective gravely observed, speaking for the first time.
She laughed a little to herself.
“You might have striven for ever in vain to solve the mystery,” she answered at last, apparently bracing herself up for an effort. “Those who aimed that terrible blow, so swift and so fatal, were not the kind of persons to be ever caught napping. They never made a false move, and always took such elaborate precautions that to solve the enigma would be impossible to any one unacquainted with previous events.”
Her breast rose and fell quickly in her wild agitation. She was stirred by emotion to the depths of her being.
“I was weak and helpless,” she faltered. “God knows how I have suffered; how deep has been my repentance. Hear me to the end,” she urged, turning her fine eyes to mine. “Then, when I have told you my wretched if astounding story, Frank, judge me as you think fit—for I am yours.”
“Speak!” I said anxiously. “My justice shall be tempered with mercy.”
By that sentence she had acknowledged her love for me, but now I hesitated. She was accused of murder.
“Then I must begin at the very beginning, for it is a long and most complicated story, a story of a deep-laid intrigue and conspiracy, and of a duplicity extraordinary,” she said, her thin, nerveless hand trembling in mine as I held her with my arm about her waist. “In the days when I had reached my sixteenth year I lived with my mother abroad, in Italy for the most part, because it was cheap, and further because my father, who had been guilty of certain shady transactions, had been compelled to fly from England. He had treated my mother shamefully, therefore they were separated, and mother and I lived economically in these cheap pensions in Florence and Rome which seem to exist as asylums for the well-bred needy. A few days after I was sixteen, while we were at an obscure pension in Siena, my mother took typhoid and died, leaving me absolutely alone in the world, and practically penniless. Nearly a year before we had received a letter from my father’s solicitors in London stating that he had died in poverty in Buenos Aires, therefore I was utterly alone. The position of a friendless girl on the Continent is always serious,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “Acting upon the advice of some English people in the pension I went to Florence and saw there the Consul-General, who not only gave me money from the British Relief Fund, which is supported by English residents in that city, but also interested himself actively upon my behalf and obtained for me a post as governess in a wealthy Italian family living near Bologna. In their service I remained nearly three years, until, by the death of the head of the house, the family became scattered, when I took a fresh engagement with a lady who advertised for an English companion. She was a Madame Damant, a good-looking woman of forty-five, whose father, I understood, had been Italian, and whose mother English. She spoke English quite as well as I did, and had a fine apartment in Florence, where she received a good deal, for she was well-known there. With the winter over we travelled first to Paris, where we stayed several months, and then to Switzerland. Our life was pleasant, as Madame had plenty of money and we always lived at the best hotels.”
She paused and drew a long breath. There was a hardness about her mouth, and tears were in her eyes.
“It was in Zurich that I had my first misgivings, for there one day in late autumn we were joined by a strange old gentleman, Hartmann by name, whom I understood was Madame’s brother, a curious old fellow, whose main object in life appeared to be the carrying out of certain scientific experiments. He remained with us in the same hotel for nearly a fortnight, during which time Madame, who was extremely well-educated, held frequent consultations with him upon scientific matters, until one day I was overjoyed when she announced that we were all three to go straight to London.”
“Then the Lady Glaslyn at The Hollies was not your mother?” I gasped, profoundly amazed at this revelation.
“I am about to explain,” she went on in a hard voice. “On the night before our departure from Zurich I chanced to pass the door of Madame’s bedroom after everybody had retired to rest, and seeing a light issuing from the keyhole was prompted by natural curiosity to peep within. What I saw was certainly strange. In one hand she was holding an unopened bottle of Benedictine liqueur upside down, while with the other she took a hypodermic syringe filled with some liquid, and with the long thin needle pierced the cork, then slowly, and with infinite care, she injected the liquid from the tiny glass syringe. Afterwards she withdrew the hollow needle, glanced at the parchment capsule beneath the light, and having satisfied herself that the puncture made was quite unnoticeable, she shook the bottle so as to thoroughly mix the injected liquid with the liqueur. Then I saw her wrap the bottle carefully in a number of towels and place it in her trunk. Next day, when packing, I glanced at the bottle with some curiosity, examining the parchment covering the cork, but so tiny had been the puncture that I failed to discover the hole. The parchment had, I think, been touched with gum, which had caused the tiny hole to close.”
“That liqueur was evidently poisoned,” Boyd remarked, his brows knit in thought.
“Yes,” she answered. “I have every reason to believe so, although the true state of affairs did not dawn upon me until long afterwards. When alone in our compartment in thewagon-litbetween Basle and Calais, Madame, however, made a very extraordinary proposal to me. She confessed that her husband had been made the scapegoat of some financial fraud in England and was in hiding somewhere near Paris, therefore, in going back, she feared that if she went under her right name—Damant—that the police would begin to make active inquiries regarding monsieur. She wished, she said, to avoid this and set up a house in some pleasant suburb of London, so as to have apied-à-terrein the country she so dearly loved. Now my mother was dead, and no friends in England knew her, so many years had she lived on the Continent, why should she not pass as Lady Glaslyn and I as her daughter? At first this proposal utterly staggered me, but when she pointed out how much more I would be respected as her daughter instead of her companion, and told me of the manner in which she intended to live—a manner befitting her assumed station—I at length gave my consent, for which she made me a present there and then of a very acceptable bank-note.”
“Then that woman only posed as your mother!” I exclaimed. “She was not the real Lady Glaslyn?”
“Certainly not,” answered my beloved frankly. “At first I was very indisposed to be a party to any such transaction, but she had shown me so many kindnesses, and had always been so generous, that I, a friendless girl, felt compelled to accede. Ah! if I had but known what lay behind all that outward show of good feeling and sympathy I would have cast her accursed money from me as I could cast the gold of Satan. I would rather have made matches for a starvation wage, or slaved at a shop-counter, than have remained one day longer beneath her roof. But she was full of cool ingenuity and marvellous cunning, and on my acceptance of this proposal instantly set to work to bind me further to secrecy. This was not difficult, alas! for I was entirely unsuspicious of treachery, and least of all of my generous friend and benefactor. After some search and many interviews with house-agents we found The Hollies, which she purchased, together with the furniture just as it stood, and ere long neighbours began to call upon us, and we soon entered local society. Many times in those dull winter days I pondered long and deeply upon what I had seen in Zurich, wondering for what reason she had so carefully prepared the bottle which had passed the customs at Charing Cross undiscovered, and still remained locked in the travelling-trunk, surrounded by the wrappings she had placed upon it.”
“Was any of the liqueur given to any one?” asked Boyd grimly.
Ere she could respond the door was thrown open, and Dick entered with Lily Lowry. He had, it transpired, gone that day and besought her forgiveness.
In a single glance he realised what had occurred, and without a word he closed the door, and both stood in silence to listen to her statement.
How strange a thing is this life of ours! We are in hell one hour, and in heaven the next.
Chapter Twenty Four.The Truth Revealed.“Remain patient and I’ll explain,” Eva answered, glancing at the new-comers. “First, however, let me relate a very curious circumstance. Hartmann, who lived somewhere in London, we saw seldom, but very soon after taking possession of The Hollies, there one day called an old friend of Madame’s, accompanied by her husband. They were the Blains. Mrs Blain afterwards came frequently to us at The Hollies, and we often spent the day at Riverdene, while so intimate did the two women become that Madame took the house next to that rented by Mrs Blain in Kensington.”“Next door?” I gasped, astounded. “In Upper Phillimore Place?”“Yes, the house next to the one you entered on that fatal night was in the occupation of Madame,” she explained. “We seldom went there, however, although I personally preferred the bright life in Kensington to that at Hampton. From the many private conversations, meaning looks and mysterious whisperings exchanged between Madame and Mrs Blain there was soon aroused within me a vague suspicion that something secret was in progress. I liked old Mr Blain exceedingly, and Mary became my best friend; nevertheless, my misgivings were strengthened, when one day Hartmann, unusually shabbily dressed and accompanied by the Blains, arrived at The Hollies and the trio were closeted for quite an hour with Madame. At length there also arrived a youngish good-looking man with a lady of about his own age, and they were at once admitted to the drawing-room, being enthusiastically welcomed. After half an hour or so we all dined together, but in the drawing-room before dinner I noticed two tumblers half-filled with dirty water, in one a tiny glass rod evidently used for mixing, as though Hartmann had been exhibiting some of his secret experiments. On entering the dining-room, Madame introduced her new guests to me as Mr and Mrs Coulter-Kerr, and sitting beside the husband I found him a most interesting and intelligent man, who literally adored his wife. In the course of conversation it transpired that the newly-arrived pair were from India, and had taken the Blains’ town house for the season, and further, that Hartmann, who had apparently become one of their most intimate friends, had established his laboratory in one of the top rooms of that house.”She paused and glanced across to the detective, who was listening attentively with folded arms. As she related her story her great clear eyes became more luminous.“A week later,” she continued, “we went to London and there saw a good deal of our next-door neighbours. Madame was on terms of the closest intimacy with them, and frequently we would dine there, or they would dine with us, while one evening Hartmann—who did not live there, but only came to continue his scientific studies, assisted by Mr Kerr, who took the keenest interest in them—invited us up into his laboratory, and after showing us Mr Kerr’s collection of pet Indian snakes, which I confess I did not appreciate, he exhibited to us an experiment which he told us had never been successfully accomplished by any other man except himself, namely, the liquefaction of hydrogen. To succeed in this, he told us, all his efforts had been directed for years, and now that he had successfully solved the problem he would one day launch it upon the scientific world as a bolt from the blue. Our friends gave excellent dinners, were evidently possessed of almost unlimited means, and were never so happy as when the Blains and ourselves were at their table or playing cards with them. Soon, however, another matter caused me deep reflection. One evening at The Hollies, after the Blains and Hartmann had been closely closeted with Madame, discussing, as they so often did, their private affairs, I found lying beneath a book upon the table, and apparently overlooked, several plain cards, and others with devices, lines and circles roughly-drawn in ink. Then two or three days later, when I chanced to call in at the Kerrs, I noticed, stuck behind a mirror over the mantelshelf, some cards exactly similar. I was alone, therefore my curiosity prompted me to examine them. Upon them I found exactly similar devices!”“Ah! what connexion had those cards with the affair?” interrupted Dick.“A very curious one,” she responded, pale, yet now firm in her determination to tell us everything. “Their discovery caused me a good deal of thought, especially as the secret consultations with Mr Blain became more frequent when, after a fortnight or so in London, we returned to The Hollies. One day, however, a further incident happened, which was, to say the least, extraordinary. While alone in Madame’s bedroom the cook entered, asking for some coppers to pay for some small article which had been brought. She wanted sevenpence. I had only sixpence in my purse, but remembering that in the little cabinet where Madame kept her jewels I had seen a penny on the previous day I unlocked it and took it out. Strangely enough, this penny was wrapped up in paper. I took it in my hand and turned it over to assure myself that it was not any rare foreign coin, and was about to hand it to the cook when Madame herself came in. ‘What’s that you have?’ she cried, in an instant pale-faced in alarm. I told her that I had taken the penny from the cabinet, whereupon she betrayed the greatest apprehension, and snatched up a piece of paper in which she carefully re-wrapped it. Then, telling me on no account to again touch it or open it, she gave the cook a penny from her pocket and dismissed her. Almost next instant I felt an indescribable numbness in the hand that had held the forbidden coin. The fingers seemed paralysed, and I had a faint idea that I had felt a strange roughness about the face of the copper, as though it had been chipped. I complained to Madame of the curious feeling, whereupon she flew to her small travelling medicine-chest, which she always kept locked, and took therefrom a phial, from which she poured a few drops of a dark green liquid into a glass of water. ‘There,’ she said, betraying quite undue alarm, I thought, ‘drink that. You’ll be better very quickly.’ I gulped it down. It tasted very bitter, but within a quarter of an hour I felt no further pain. My hand had in a few seconds commenced to swell, but the medicine at once arrested it. Until long afterwards it never occurred to me that upon that penny was one of those insidious but most deadly of poisons known to toxicologists, which, entering by an abrasion of the skin, would have quickly proved fatal had not my employer at once administered an antidote. Later, I succeeded in obtaining possession of that coin, and found upon it a series of almost infinitesimal steel points, a puncture or scratch from any one of which must result in death.”I recollected how we had discovered that coin in her escritoire. We might congratulate ourselves that neither of us had held it in our hands without its wrappings.“For a long time I was greatly puzzled by these and other circumstances. Certain scraps of conversation which I overheard between Madame and Blain, and between my employer and Hartmann, increased my suspicions, and especially so when I found Madame carrying on a series of secret experiments in her own rooms, often boiling certain decoctions over the tiny spirit-lamp used to heat her curling-irons. Several of the liquids thus manufactured she placed in the tiny phials of her medicine-chest. All this time, while passing everywhere as my mother, Lady Glaslyn, she was extremely kind to me, until I even began to believe that my suspicions were unfounded. Only now do I know how subtle was her cunning, how ingenious and how daring she was. One day, in April, I, however, had my suspicions still more deeply strengthened by a strange request she made to me, namely, that if at any time I should chance to witness any uncommon scene in her house, that I would breathe no word to a single soul. This struck me as peculiar, and I demanded the reason, whereupon she smiled, giving me bluntly to understand that my own safety lay alone in my secrecy, and pointing out that by obtaining quantities of goods and jewellery on credit, as I had done at her request from firms in Regent Street and Oxford Street, in the name of Lady Glaslyn, I had placed myself in grave peril of being arrested for fraud. I saw instantly that this woman who had posed as my friend had most cleverly spread about me a web from which there was now no possible escape. She evidently desired my assistance in whatever nefarious purpose she had in view.”“What a position!” I exclaimed. “Then the woman had compelled you to obtain the goods by fraud in order to secure a certain hold over you?”“Of course,” she answered in a low, firm tone. “But that’s not half the craft and cunning she displayed, as you will perceive later. I know I have acted wrongly, and should have long ago placed my suspicions before the police, but I feared to do so, lest I should be arrested for the fraud. From day to day I lived on in anxiety and breathless wonder, Mrs Blain or Blain himself being constant visitors to The Hollies, while now and then Hartmann would come down from London, as if called in for consultation. At length, one day in early June, we returned to the house in Upper Phillimore Place, Madame announcing her intention to remain there a month. Our neighbours, the Coulter-Kerrs, were delighted at our return, for they seemed to know hardly a soul in London. After we had been there about a week Mrs Blain and Mary called one afternoon, and while I chatted to the latter in the dining-room, Mrs Blain talked privately with Madame in the room beyond. The door was closed, as usual, and they were conversing only in low whispers, when suddenly their voices became raised in heated discussion. A quarrel had arisen, for I heard Mrs Blain exclaim quite distinctly: ‘I tell you I have never dreamed of any such thing; and I’ll never be a party to it. Such a suggestion is horrifying!’ Then Madame spoke some low words, to which her companion responded: ‘I tell you I will not! From this moment I retire from it. Such a thing is infamous! I never thought that it was intended to act in such a manner.’ To this Madame made some muttered observation regarding ‘absurd scruples’ and the impossibility of detection, whereupon Mrs Blain flounced forth from the room in a high state of indignation, saying, ‘Mary, it’s time we should go, dear, or we shan’t be home for dinner.’ Then she made a cold adieu to the woman who had been her most intimate friend, and with her daughter departed.” Eva’s breath came and went rapidly in the intensity of her emotions, her thin nostrils slightly dilated, and as she paused her lips were firmly pressed together.“Next morning, at about eleven, almost before Madame was ready to receive, Blain himself called,” she went on. “He was grey-faced and very grave, but after a rather long interview he left in high spirits, wishing me farewell quite gaily. On the following day the Coulter-Kerrs were in great distress about their servants, for both were dishonest, and upon Madame’s declaration that she could immediately find others they had been discharged at a moment’s notice. About five o’clock that afternoon both husband and wife, with whom I was on the most friendly terms, came in to chat with Madame about the servants, and after we had conversed some time tea was brought, of which we all partook. Then Madame invited them in for whist after dinner, as was our habit, for we were all inveterate players. About six o’clock, while I accompanied Mr Kerr next door in order to prepare their makeshift meal, Mrs Kerr—Madame always called her Anna—remained behind to make some arrangements for one of our servants to go in temporarily. Suddenly, about twenty minutes later, while I was in the kitchen washing some salad, I became conscious of a strange, sharp pain which struck me across the eyes, followed almost instantly by a kind of paralysis of the limbs and a feeling of giddiness. I ascended to the hall, calling loudly for help, and from the drawing-room heard Mr Kerr’s voice, hoarse and strange-toned, in response. With difficulty I struggled up the second flight of stairs, but on entering the room where the tiny red light burned—some curious Indian superstition of Mrs Kerr’s—I saw in the dusk that Kerr had fallen prone on the floor and was motionless as one dead. Then, helpless, I tottered across to a chair, and sinking into it all consciousness left me.”Both Boyd and myself stood breathless at these startling revelations.“When I came to myself,” she continued, “I was back in Madame’s house next door. She had forced some liquid between my lips, and was injecting some other fluid into my arms with a hypodermic syringe. I was amazed, too, to notice that she had changed her dress, assumed a grey wig, and wore a cap with bright ribbons, in most marvellous imitation of an old lady. While I thus remained on the couch in the back sitting-room, dazed and only half conscious, there came a loud ring at the door and I overheard a police-officer making inquiries of ‘Mrs Luff’ regarding the people next door. Then I knew that Kerr’s body had been discovered, and that Madame was personating the previous occupier of that house. I was not, however, aware at that time of how Hartmann had called upon Madame and had carried Mrs Kerr through a small breach made in the fencing of the garden at the rear into her own house, or that I had been brought back by the same way into ours. Madame, when all was clear, went that night down to The Hollies, leaving me alone with the servants, who, having apparently been sent out upon errands during the events described, knew nothing. I therefore kept my own counsel, and recollecting having overheard Blain, when taking leave of Madame on his last visit, refer to an appointment he had with Hartmann in St. James’s Park, I resolved also to keep it. I did, but instead of meeting him,” she said, addressing me, “I met you.”“I recollect the meeting well,” I answered. “Continue.”“Well, I returned to The Hollies, but it was evident from Madame’s manner that she was in deadly fear. I was not, of course, aware of what had actually occurred, although I entertained the horrible suspicion that both my friends had fallen victims. She took me partly into her confidence later that day, for the police, she said, would discover an ‘awkward accident’ next door, and that she must not be seen and recognised as Mrs Luff. She told me that, in order to avoid any unpleasant inquiries, Hartmann had entered the place before the police, and had carried away every scrap of anything that could lead to their identity, and as I knew from Mr Kerr’s previous conversation that all his letters were addressed to Drummond’s Bank, it seemed improbable that the bodies would be identified. ‘It’s a very serious matter for us,’ Madame said to me earnestly. ‘Therefore say nothing, either to Mrs Blain or Mary.’ By that, and other subsequent circumstances, I knew that both were in ignorance. They had no hand whatever in the ghastly affair, for after the quarrel they never again met Madame.“Weeks went by,” she continued, after a pause. “I still remained on friendly terms with Mrs Blain and her daughter, knowing them to be innocent. Madame never went out, but once or twice Hartmann visited her. Whenever he did so, high words usually arose, regarding money, it seemed, and once Blain, who by his family was supposed to be still in Paris, came late at night, ill-dressed and dirty. It was then that I first learnt the motive for the ingenious conspiracy. Blain seemed in abject fear that the police had somehow established the identity of the dead man. If so, he said, all had been futile. Hartmann, it appeared, had a daughter whom I had never seen, and it was through her that the activity of the police had been ascertained.” Then, turning her eyes again to me with an undisguised love-look, Eva exclaimed, “The tortures of conscience which I suffered through those summer days when you declared your love are known to God alone. My position was a terrible one, for I saw that by preserving this secret I had been an accessory to a most foul and cowardly crime, and I held back from your embrace, knowing that one day ere long I should be arrested and brought to punishment. I lived on, my heart gripped by that awful sin in which I had been unwittingly implicated. Then one day you called at The Hollies and I gave you some wine from a fresh bottle which I opened myself. It was wine which Madame had specially ordered from the stores on my account because the doctor had prescribed port for me. That wine was poisoned, and you narrowly escaped death. The fatal draught was intended for me! Hartmann and Madame Damant had, indeed, brought poisoning to a fine art.”“Was poison never in your possession?” inquired Boyd gravely.“Yes,” she responded without a second’s hesitation. “After the affair at Phillimore Place I discovered Hartmann’s address, and from a paper in Madame’s jewel-cabinet I copied some strange name—Latin, I think—which I knew related to one of the secret poisons. Then, in order to satisfy myself as to Hartmann’s position, I went to him to obtain some. My idea was that the information I could thus obtain would be of use if I were arrested. I found that under the name of Morris Lowry he had for years kept a herbalist’s shop near theElephant and Castle. Fortunately, by reason of my veil, he did not recognise me, and after some haggling gave me some greyish powder in a small wooden box securely sealed. I discovered afterwards that his daughter was in love with your friend Mr Cleugh, therefore it must have been through the latter that the old man became aware of the movements of the police.”“Yes,” said Lily simply, “it was.” The revelation held her dumbfounded.“Then Hartmann and Lowry were actually one and the same?” I observed, bewildered.“Certainly,” Eva answered, all her soul in her eyes. “But there was yet a further curious incident. A few days after you had taken that fatal draught from my hand, Madame, in sudden anger, discharged all three servants. Then, when they had gone, she had a small square hole about six inches wide cut in the wall of one of the rooms—a bathroom adjoining my bedroom—close down to the floor, and before it was fitted a sliding panel in the wainscoting. Afterwards she had a strong iron bar placed upon the door, and the whole re-painted and grained. Then, having furnished the place roughly as a living-room, there came secretly late one night the wretched poisoner Hartmann,aliasProfessor Douglas Dawson, flying from the police for some previous offence, as I afterwards discovered. Some German police-agents had got wind of his whereabouts. He entered that room, and when he was inside Madame fetched an apparatus I had never seen before, a kind of punch, and with it placed a leaden seal upon the door. Fresh servants were at once engaged, and these were told that inside that room was a quantity of antique furniture belonging to a friend who had gone abroad. Meanwhile Madame herself supplied the fugitive with food, cooked and uncooked, drink and books, and for a fortnight or so he lived there in secret. I held him in loathing and in hatred, yet I dared not utter a word or even flee from that house of terror, knowing well that in such case I, too, would quickly fall a victim to the machinations of what seemed a widespread conspiracy. I was in possession of their secret, and might turn informer. That was the reason those half-dozen bottles of port wine had been so generously given to me by my ingenious employer. I dared scarcely to eat or drink, and often slipped out secretly and bought cooked meat and bread to satisfy my hunger. One day, when Madame had ventured up to London, I chanced to enter the bedroom I had previously occupied. The panel was cautiously pushed back, and the man within asked for something to drink. I answered that I only had some port, all the rest being locked up. ‘Then give me that,’ he said. I hesitated, then in sudden desperation I went to the cupboard where the wine was and handed him an unopened bottle. He gave a grunt of satisfaction, and the panel closed. That wine, Frank,” she added, a deathlike pallor on her cheeks, “was the same as that of which you partook. Madame had prepared it with her little syringe as she had done the Benedictine.”She paused, placing her hand upon her panting breast.“When she returned,” she continued at last, for the nervousness which had agitated her at first gave place to strength and confidence, “her first question was of Hartmann. I told her of his request, and how I had acceded to it, giving him a bottle of the wine she had so generously ordered for me. She grew livid in an instant, and stood speechless, glaring at me as though she would strike me dead. Then rushing up to the room she drew back the panel and called him by name. There was no response. In an instant she knew the truth. Without uttering a single word to me, but ordering the servants to close the house as we were going away for a week or two, she made instant preparations for departure, and after seeing everything securely bolted and barred, she left with a trunk on a cab for Fulwell Station, while I, with my small trunk, took refuge with my friends the Blains, with whom I have since remained.”“But the motive of that secret assassination at Phillimore Place?” I asked, astounded at her story.“Only within the past few days have I discovered it,” she answered. “The crime was planned with extraordinary care and forethought. If it were not for this confession which you have wrung from me, the police would never, I believe, have elucidated the mystery. The reason briefly was this. Coulter-Kerr was an Englishman living in Calcutta, who had been left a great indigo estate in the North-West by his uncle, and had returned to England with a view of selling it to a company. The estate, one of the finest in the whole of India, realised a very handsome income, but both he and his wife preferred life in England. Blain, being a speculator and promoter of companies, besides an importer of wines, having been introduced to him, conceived a plan of obtaining this magnificent estate, and with that object had approached Hartmann who in his turn had enlisted the services of Madame Damant, both of them being very desperate characters. Hartmann lived in London, and was supposed to be the most expert toxicologist in the whole world, while Madame was a woman whose previous adventures had earned for her great renown in certain shady circles on the Continent.“Blain, it appeared, had already been out to India to visit the estate, and on his return had paid a couple of thousand pounds deposit, agreeing to purchase it privately of Kerr for two hundred thousand pounds—the valuation made upon it by a valuer whom he had taken up with him from Bombay—and then to turn it into a company. A date was arranged when the money should be paid over at the house in Phillimore Place in exchange for the deeds duly executed, Hartmann, in whose experiments Kerr was so interested, to be present to witness any document necessary. In accordance with Blain’s request the deeds were therefore prepared beforehand and executed, and all the papers relating to the transaction placed in order in the large deed-box in which they had been brought from India. In accordance with the cunningly-devised plan, Blain called upon the Kerrs on the afternoon arranged—the afternoon of the day of the tragedy—and found Kerr ready with all the legal papers and receipts duly executed. Blain, however, was profuse in his apologies, stating that, owing to some slight difficulty with his bank, he was unable to draw that day, but would do so on the day following, and would return at the same hour. The Kerrs, on their part, expressed regret that they could not ask him to remain to dinner, but explained that they had no servants.”Again she paused. Her story held us all speechless.“I have already explained how the Kerrs afterwards visited me and took tea, and the terrible tragedy which followed. Hartmann was, without doubt, concealed in that house at the time, watching for the unfortunate man’s end, and without delay secured the deed-box and all the receipts and papers, carrying them next door, searching the body of the man, and placing certain things in his pockets, namely, the forged banknotes and the penny wrapped in paper, which would puzzle the police, while Blain had caused that same evening to be posted from theGrand Hotelin Paris, a letter to the man now dead, addressed to Drummond’s Bank, expressing satisfaction at the termination of the negotiations, and acknowledging the safe receipt of the deeds and transfers from the messenger he had sent. This was, of course, to carry out the fiction that for several weeks he had been in Paris on business connected with the floating of the company, and to enable him to prove analibiif ever required. Blain, when in India, took good care that it should be widely known that he intended to purchase the estates, so that his sudden possession would not be considered strange. There was a man, it afterwards transpired, who was actually staying at theGrandin Paris in the name of Blain, and he had posted the letter, while I further discovered that this ingenious swindler had actually borrowed the sum of two hundred thousand pounds for three days to pass through his bank, so that he might show that he had paid for the property.”“Then Blain is in actual possession of the deeds, which only require the stamp of the courts in India for the property to become his?” Boyd observed.“Yes,” responded my beloved. “But the fear that you have discovered the dead man’s identity has hitherto prevented him taking possession or raising money on the deeds. He has placed them somewhere in safety, I suppose, and is now most likely out of the country.”“Absolutely astounding!” I gasped. Then, on reflection, I inquired the meaning of the cards which had so puzzled us.“Horrible though it may seem,” she said, “they were used to cast lots as to who should actually administer the poison, being shuffled and dealt face downwards. There were fifty, only two of which were marked. It was, I have learnt, the mode in which the Anarchists of Zurich cast lots, the person receiving the one with the line to commit the crime, while whoever received the circle became the accomplice and protector. With grim disregard for consequences these very cards were afterwards used by the assassins and their victims to decide upon partners for whist, sometimes being placed beneath the plates at dinner when, on entering the room, the guests were allowed to choose their places, afterwards turning up their cards. This gave rise sometimes to great amusement. What would the unfortunate pair have thought could they have known the truth? Alas! I did not know it until too late, or I would have given them warning, regardless of the consequences.”Boyd briefly explained how he had seen Blain throw something into the lake in St. James’s Park, whereupon Eva suggested that the object he thus got rid of was no doubt one of the poisoned coins with which Hartmann had supplied him at his request.I referred to the incident of the telephone, and Eva explained how she had since discovered that Blain had made an inquiry by telephone, in full belief that it was Hartmann who had responded. When next day he discovered his mistake he saw how narrowly he had escaped the police. Mary’s letter to me had, no doubt, been a coincidence, but her subsequent visit was at her mother’s instigation, it having been discovered that I was aware of the terrible tragedy.“You received some type-written letters?” Boyd observed. “Who wrote them?”“Blain,” she replied, surprised that he should be aware of this. “He knew that I had discovered the secret, and wrote urging me to take the utmost precautions to preserve what he guardedly referred to as the Silence.”“But you say that Madame herself took tea with her victims?” I said. “She did not suffer.”“Certainly not,” responded my beloved. “In her expert hand these poisons, discovered by Hartmann, may be fatal to one person and perfectly harmless to another. She no doubt drank some prophylactic first, which at once counteracted any ill effect of poison taken afterwards. Hartmann seems to have re-discovered the secrets dead with the Borgias, for Madame can, I believe, secrete a swift and deadly poison within almost anything.”“Where is she now?” asked Boyd quickly. “We must take immediate steps for her arrest, as well as Blain’s.”“Madame has flown to the Continent, but where I have no idea,” she replied. “To-night I intended to go to Paris and try to obtain a situation as governess, for I feared to remain longer in England, knowing of the body of Hartmann lying in that closed room at the Hollies.”“You must remain,” Boyd said quietly. “Your evidence will be required.”“Ah, no! I cannot,” she declared, bursting into a torrent of tears. “After this confession I—” and her voice was choked by sobs as she covered her haggard face with her hands.“After this confession, darling,” I said tenderly, “I love you none the less.”Then, clasping her swaying figure to me in wild ecstasy, I felt the swell of her bosom against my breast, and I covered her cold, tear-stained cheeks with passionate kisses, while she, for the first time, raised her sweet full lips to mine in a fervid, passionate caress, and murmured that she loved me.Ah! what joy was mine at that moment. A new life had been renewed within me, for I knew that by the sacred bond of an undying affection she was bound to me for ever.
“Remain patient and I’ll explain,” Eva answered, glancing at the new-comers. “First, however, let me relate a very curious circumstance. Hartmann, who lived somewhere in London, we saw seldom, but very soon after taking possession of The Hollies, there one day called an old friend of Madame’s, accompanied by her husband. They were the Blains. Mrs Blain afterwards came frequently to us at The Hollies, and we often spent the day at Riverdene, while so intimate did the two women become that Madame took the house next to that rented by Mrs Blain in Kensington.”
“Next door?” I gasped, astounded. “In Upper Phillimore Place?”
“Yes, the house next to the one you entered on that fatal night was in the occupation of Madame,” she explained. “We seldom went there, however, although I personally preferred the bright life in Kensington to that at Hampton. From the many private conversations, meaning looks and mysterious whisperings exchanged between Madame and Mrs Blain there was soon aroused within me a vague suspicion that something secret was in progress. I liked old Mr Blain exceedingly, and Mary became my best friend; nevertheless, my misgivings were strengthened, when one day Hartmann, unusually shabbily dressed and accompanied by the Blains, arrived at The Hollies and the trio were closeted for quite an hour with Madame. At length there also arrived a youngish good-looking man with a lady of about his own age, and they were at once admitted to the drawing-room, being enthusiastically welcomed. After half an hour or so we all dined together, but in the drawing-room before dinner I noticed two tumblers half-filled with dirty water, in one a tiny glass rod evidently used for mixing, as though Hartmann had been exhibiting some of his secret experiments. On entering the dining-room, Madame introduced her new guests to me as Mr and Mrs Coulter-Kerr, and sitting beside the husband I found him a most interesting and intelligent man, who literally adored his wife. In the course of conversation it transpired that the newly-arrived pair were from India, and had taken the Blains’ town house for the season, and further, that Hartmann, who had apparently become one of their most intimate friends, had established his laboratory in one of the top rooms of that house.”
She paused and glanced across to the detective, who was listening attentively with folded arms. As she related her story her great clear eyes became more luminous.
“A week later,” she continued, “we went to London and there saw a good deal of our next-door neighbours. Madame was on terms of the closest intimacy with them, and frequently we would dine there, or they would dine with us, while one evening Hartmann—who did not live there, but only came to continue his scientific studies, assisted by Mr Kerr, who took the keenest interest in them—invited us up into his laboratory, and after showing us Mr Kerr’s collection of pet Indian snakes, which I confess I did not appreciate, he exhibited to us an experiment which he told us had never been successfully accomplished by any other man except himself, namely, the liquefaction of hydrogen. To succeed in this, he told us, all his efforts had been directed for years, and now that he had successfully solved the problem he would one day launch it upon the scientific world as a bolt from the blue. Our friends gave excellent dinners, were evidently possessed of almost unlimited means, and were never so happy as when the Blains and ourselves were at their table or playing cards with them. Soon, however, another matter caused me deep reflection. One evening at The Hollies, after the Blains and Hartmann had been closely closeted with Madame, discussing, as they so often did, their private affairs, I found lying beneath a book upon the table, and apparently overlooked, several plain cards, and others with devices, lines and circles roughly-drawn in ink. Then two or three days later, when I chanced to call in at the Kerrs, I noticed, stuck behind a mirror over the mantelshelf, some cards exactly similar. I was alone, therefore my curiosity prompted me to examine them. Upon them I found exactly similar devices!”
“Ah! what connexion had those cards with the affair?” interrupted Dick.
“A very curious one,” she responded, pale, yet now firm in her determination to tell us everything. “Their discovery caused me a good deal of thought, especially as the secret consultations with Mr Blain became more frequent when, after a fortnight or so in London, we returned to The Hollies. One day, however, a further incident happened, which was, to say the least, extraordinary. While alone in Madame’s bedroom the cook entered, asking for some coppers to pay for some small article which had been brought. She wanted sevenpence. I had only sixpence in my purse, but remembering that in the little cabinet where Madame kept her jewels I had seen a penny on the previous day I unlocked it and took it out. Strangely enough, this penny was wrapped up in paper. I took it in my hand and turned it over to assure myself that it was not any rare foreign coin, and was about to hand it to the cook when Madame herself came in. ‘What’s that you have?’ she cried, in an instant pale-faced in alarm. I told her that I had taken the penny from the cabinet, whereupon she betrayed the greatest apprehension, and snatched up a piece of paper in which she carefully re-wrapped it. Then, telling me on no account to again touch it or open it, she gave the cook a penny from her pocket and dismissed her. Almost next instant I felt an indescribable numbness in the hand that had held the forbidden coin. The fingers seemed paralysed, and I had a faint idea that I had felt a strange roughness about the face of the copper, as though it had been chipped. I complained to Madame of the curious feeling, whereupon she flew to her small travelling medicine-chest, which she always kept locked, and took therefrom a phial, from which she poured a few drops of a dark green liquid into a glass of water. ‘There,’ she said, betraying quite undue alarm, I thought, ‘drink that. You’ll be better very quickly.’ I gulped it down. It tasted very bitter, but within a quarter of an hour I felt no further pain. My hand had in a few seconds commenced to swell, but the medicine at once arrested it. Until long afterwards it never occurred to me that upon that penny was one of those insidious but most deadly of poisons known to toxicologists, which, entering by an abrasion of the skin, would have quickly proved fatal had not my employer at once administered an antidote. Later, I succeeded in obtaining possession of that coin, and found upon it a series of almost infinitesimal steel points, a puncture or scratch from any one of which must result in death.”
I recollected how we had discovered that coin in her escritoire. We might congratulate ourselves that neither of us had held it in our hands without its wrappings.
“For a long time I was greatly puzzled by these and other circumstances. Certain scraps of conversation which I overheard between Madame and Blain, and between my employer and Hartmann, increased my suspicions, and especially so when I found Madame carrying on a series of secret experiments in her own rooms, often boiling certain decoctions over the tiny spirit-lamp used to heat her curling-irons. Several of the liquids thus manufactured she placed in the tiny phials of her medicine-chest. All this time, while passing everywhere as my mother, Lady Glaslyn, she was extremely kind to me, until I even began to believe that my suspicions were unfounded. Only now do I know how subtle was her cunning, how ingenious and how daring she was. One day, in April, I, however, had my suspicions still more deeply strengthened by a strange request she made to me, namely, that if at any time I should chance to witness any uncommon scene in her house, that I would breathe no word to a single soul. This struck me as peculiar, and I demanded the reason, whereupon she smiled, giving me bluntly to understand that my own safety lay alone in my secrecy, and pointing out that by obtaining quantities of goods and jewellery on credit, as I had done at her request from firms in Regent Street and Oxford Street, in the name of Lady Glaslyn, I had placed myself in grave peril of being arrested for fraud. I saw instantly that this woman who had posed as my friend had most cleverly spread about me a web from which there was now no possible escape. She evidently desired my assistance in whatever nefarious purpose she had in view.”
“What a position!” I exclaimed. “Then the woman had compelled you to obtain the goods by fraud in order to secure a certain hold over you?”
“Of course,” she answered in a low, firm tone. “But that’s not half the craft and cunning she displayed, as you will perceive later. I know I have acted wrongly, and should have long ago placed my suspicions before the police, but I feared to do so, lest I should be arrested for the fraud. From day to day I lived on in anxiety and breathless wonder, Mrs Blain or Blain himself being constant visitors to The Hollies, while now and then Hartmann would come down from London, as if called in for consultation. At length, one day in early June, we returned to the house in Upper Phillimore Place, Madame announcing her intention to remain there a month. Our neighbours, the Coulter-Kerrs, were delighted at our return, for they seemed to know hardly a soul in London. After we had been there about a week Mrs Blain and Mary called one afternoon, and while I chatted to the latter in the dining-room, Mrs Blain talked privately with Madame in the room beyond. The door was closed, as usual, and they were conversing only in low whispers, when suddenly their voices became raised in heated discussion. A quarrel had arisen, for I heard Mrs Blain exclaim quite distinctly: ‘I tell you I have never dreamed of any such thing; and I’ll never be a party to it. Such a suggestion is horrifying!’ Then Madame spoke some low words, to which her companion responded: ‘I tell you I will not! From this moment I retire from it. Such a thing is infamous! I never thought that it was intended to act in such a manner.’ To this Madame made some muttered observation regarding ‘absurd scruples’ and the impossibility of detection, whereupon Mrs Blain flounced forth from the room in a high state of indignation, saying, ‘Mary, it’s time we should go, dear, or we shan’t be home for dinner.’ Then she made a cold adieu to the woman who had been her most intimate friend, and with her daughter departed.” Eva’s breath came and went rapidly in the intensity of her emotions, her thin nostrils slightly dilated, and as she paused her lips were firmly pressed together.
“Next morning, at about eleven, almost before Madame was ready to receive, Blain himself called,” she went on. “He was grey-faced and very grave, but after a rather long interview he left in high spirits, wishing me farewell quite gaily. On the following day the Coulter-Kerrs were in great distress about their servants, for both were dishonest, and upon Madame’s declaration that she could immediately find others they had been discharged at a moment’s notice. About five o’clock that afternoon both husband and wife, with whom I was on the most friendly terms, came in to chat with Madame about the servants, and after we had conversed some time tea was brought, of which we all partook. Then Madame invited them in for whist after dinner, as was our habit, for we were all inveterate players. About six o’clock, while I accompanied Mr Kerr next door in order to prepare their makeshift meal, Mrs Kerr—Madame always called her Anna—remained behind to make some arrangements for one of our servants to go in temporarily. Suddenly, about twenty minutes later, while I was in the kitchen washing some salad, I became conscious of a strange, sharp pain which struck me across the eyes, followed almost instantly by a kind of paralysis of the limbs and a feeling of giddiness. I ascended to the hall, calling loudly for help, and from the drawing-room heard Mr Kerr’s voice, hoarse and strange-toned, in response. With difficulty I struggled up the second flight of stairs, but on entering the room where the tiny red light burned—some curious Indian superstition of Mrs Kerr’s—I saw in the dusk that Kerr had fallen prone on the floor and was motionless as one dead. Then, helpless, I tottered across to a chair, and sinking into it all consciousness left me.”
Both Boyd and myself stood breathless at these startling revelations.
“When I came to myself,” she continued, “I was back in Madame’s house next door. She had forced some liquid between my lips, and was injecting some other fluid into my arms with a hypodermic syringe. I was amazed, too, to notice that she had changed her dress, assumed a grey wig, and wore a cap with bright ribbons, in most marvellous imitation of an old lady. While I thus remained on the couch in the back sitting-room, dazed and only half conscious, there came a loud ring at the door and I overheard a police-officer making inquiries of ‘Mrs Luff’ regarding the people next door. Then I knew that Kerr’s body had been discovered, and that Madame was personating the previous occupier of that house. I was not, however, aware at that time of how Hartmann had called upon Madame and had carried Mrs Kerr through a small breach made in the fencing of the garden at the rear into her own house, or that I had been brought back by the same way into ours. Madame, when all was clear, went that night down to The Hollies, leaving me alone with the servants, who, having apparently been sent out upon errands during the events described, knew nothing. I therefore kept my own counsel, and recollecting having overheard Blain, when taking leave of Madame on his last visit, refer to an appointment he had with Hartmann in St. James’s Park, I resolved also to keep it. I did, but instead of meeting him,” she said, addressing me, “I met you.”
“I recollect the meeting well,” I answered. “Continue.”
“Well, I returned to The Hollies, but it was evident from Madame’s manner that she was in deadly fear. I was not, of course, aware of what had actually occurred, although I entertained the horrible suspicion that both my friends had fallen victims. She took me partly into her confidence later that day, for the police, she said, would discover an ‘awkward accident’ next door, and that she must not be seen and recognised as Mrs Luff. She told me that, in order to avoid any unpleasant inquiries, Hartmann had entered the place before the police, and had carried away every scrap of anything that could lead to their identity, and as I knew from Mr Kerr’s previous conversation that all his letters were addressed to Drummond’s Bank, it seemed improbable that the bodies would be identified. ‘It’s a very serious matter for us,’ Madame said to me earnestly. ‘Therefore say nothing, either to Mrs Blain or Mary.’ By that, and other subsequent circumstances, I knew that both were in ignorance. They had no hand whatever in the ghastly affair, for after the quarrel they never again met Madame.
“Weeks went by,” she continued, after a pause. “I still remained on friendly terms with Mrs Blain and her daughter, knowing them to be innocent. Madame never went out, but once or twice Hartmann visited her. Whenever he did so, high words usually arose, regarding money, it seemed, and once Blain, who by his family was supposed to be still in Paris, came late at night, ill-dressed and dirty. It was then that I first learnt the motive for the ingenious conspiracy. Blain seemed in abject fear that the police had somehow established the identity of the dead man. If so, he said, all had been futile. Hartmann, it appeared, had a daughter whom I had never seen, and it was through her that the activity of the police had been ascertained.” Then, turning her eyes again to me with an undisguised love-look, Eva exclaimed, “The tortures of conscience which I suffered through those summer days when you declared your love are known to God alone. My position was a terrible one, for I saw that by preserving this secret I had been an accessory to a most foul and cowardly crime, and I held back from your embrace, knowing that one day ere long I should be arrested and brought to punishment. I lived on, my heart gripped by that awful sin in which I had been unwittingly implicated. Then one day you called at The Hollies and I gave you some wine from a fresh bottle which I opened myself. It was wine which Madame had specially ordered from the stores on my account because the doctor had prescribed port for me. That wine was poisoned, and you narrowly escaped death. The fatal draught was intended for me! Hartmann and Madame Damant had, indeed, brought poisoning to a fine art.”
“Was poison never in your possession?” inquired Boyd gravely.
“Yes,” she responded without a second’s hesitation. “After the affair at Phillimore Place I discovered Hartmann’s address, and from a paper in Madame’s jewel-cabinet I copied some strange name—Latin, I think—which I knew related to one of the secret poisons. Then, in order to satisfy myself as to Hartmann’s position, I went to him to obtain some. My idea was that the information I could thus obtain would be of use if I were arrested. I found that under the name of Morris Lowry he had for years kept a herbalist’s shop near theElephant and Castle. Fortunately, by reason of my veil, he did not recognise me, and after some haggling gave me some greyish powder in a small wooden box securely sealed. I discovered afterwards that his daughter was in love with your friend Mr Cleugh, therefore it must have been through the latter that the old man became aware of the movements of the police.”
“Yes,” said Lily simply, “it was.” The revelation held her dumbfounded.
“Then Hartmann and Lowry were actually one and the same?” I observed, bewildered.
“Certainly,” Eva answered, all her soul in her eyes. “But there was yet a further curious incident. A few days after you had taken that fatal draught from my hand, Madame, in sudden anger, discharged all three servants. Then, when they had gone, she had a small square hole about six inches wide cut in the wall of one of the rooms—a bathroom adjoining my bedroom—close down to the floor, and before it was fitted a sliding panel in the wainscoting. Afterwards she had a strong iron bar placed upon the door, and the whole re-painted and grained. Then, having furnished the place roughly as a living-room, there came secretly late one night the wretched poisoner Hartmann,aliasProfessor Douglas Dawson, flying from the police for some previous offence, as I afterwards discovered. Some German police-agents had got wind of his whereabouts. He entered that room, and when he was inside Madame fetched an apparatus I had never seen before, a kind of punch, and with it placed a leaden seal upon the door. Fresh servants were at once engaged, and these were told that inside that room was a quantity of antique furniture belonging to a friend who had gone abroad. Meanwhile Madame herself supplied the fugitive with food, cooked and uncooked, drink and books, and for a fortnight or so he lived there in secret. I held him in loathing and in hatred, yet I dared not utter a word or even flee from that house of terror, knowing well that in such case I, too, would quickly fall a victim to the machinations of what seemed a widespread conspiracy. I was in possession of their secret, and might turn informer. That was the reason those half-dozen bottles of port wine had been so generously given to me by my ingenious employer. I dared scarcely to eat or drink, and often slipped out secretly and bought cooked meat and bread to satisfy my hunger. One day, when Madame had ventured up to London, I chanced to enter the bedroom I had previously occupied. The panel was cautiously pushed back, and the man within asked for something to drink. I answered that I only had some port, all the rest being locked up. ‘Then give me that,’ he said. I hesitated, then in sudden desperation I went to the cupboard where the wine was and handed him an unopened bottle. He gave a grunt of satisfaction, and the panel closed. That wine, Frank,” she added, a deathlike pallor on her cheeks, “was the same as that of which you partook. Madame had prepared it with her little syringe as she had done the Benedictine.”
She paused, placing her hand upon her panting breast.
“When she returned,” she continued at last, for the nervousness which had agitated her at first gave place to strength and confidence, “her first question was of Hartmann. I told her of his request, and how I had acceded to it, giving him a bottle of the wine she had so generously ordered for me. She grew livid in an instant, and stood speechless, glaring at me as though she would strike me dead. Then rushing up to the room she drew back the panel and called him by name. There was no response. In an instant she knew the truth. Without uttering a single word to me, but ordering the servants to close the house as we were going away for a week or two, she made instant preparations for departure, and after seeing everything securely bolted and barred, she left with a trunk on a cab for Fulwell Station, while I, with my small trunk, took refuge with my friends the Blains, with whom I have since remained.”
“But the motive of that secret assassination at Phillimore Place?” I asked, astounded at her story.
“Only within the past few days have I discovered it,” she answered. “The crime was planned with extraordinary care and forethought. If it were not for this confession which you have wrung from me, the police would never, I believe, have elucidated the mystery. The reason briefly was this. Coulter-Kerr was an Englishman living in Calcutta, who had been left a great indigo estate in the North-West by his uncle, and had returned to England with a view of selling it to a company. The estate, one of the finest in the whole of India, realised a very handsome income, but both he and his wife preferred life in England. Blain, being a speculator and promoter of companies, besides an importer of wines, having been introduced to him, conceived a plan of obtaining this magnificent estate, and with that object had approached Hartmann who in his turn had enlisted the services of Madame Damant, both of them being very desperate characters. Hartmann lived in London, and was supposed to be the most expert toxicologist in the whole world, while Madame was a woman whose previous adventures had earned for her great renown in certain shady circles on the Continent.
“Blain, it appeared, had already been out to India to visit the estate, and on his return had paid a couple of thousand pounds deposit, agreeing to purchase it privately of Kerr for two hundred thousand pounds—the valuation made upon it by a valuer whom he had taken up with him from Bombay—and then to turn it into a company. A date was arranged when the money should be paid over at the house in Phillimore Place in exchange for the deeds duly executed, Hartmann, in whose experiments Kerr was so interested, to be present to witness any document necessary. In accordance with Blain’s request the deeds were therefore prepared beforehand and executed, and all the papers relating to the transaction placed in order in the large deed-box in which they had been brought from India. In accordance with the cunningly-devised plan, Blain called upon the Kerrs on the afternoon arranged—the afternoon of the day of the tragedy—and found Kerr ready with all the legal papers and receipts duly executed. Blain, however, was profuse in his apologies, stating that, owing to some slight difficulty with his bank, he was unable to draw that day, but would do so on the day following, and would return at the same hour. The Kerrs, on their part, expressed regret that they could not ask him to remain to dinner, but explained that they had no servants.”
Again she paused. Her story held us all speechless.
“I have already explained how the Kerrs afterwards visited me and took tea, and the terrible tragedy which followed. Hartmann was, without doubt, concealed in that house at the time, watching for the unfortunate man’s end, and without delay secured the deed-box and all the receipts and papers, carrying them next door, searching the body of the man, and placing certain things in his pockets, namely, the forged banknotes and the penny wrapped in paper, which would puzzle the police, while Blain had caused that same evening to be posted from theGrand Hotelin Paris, a letter to the man now dead, addressed to Drummond’s Bank, expressing satisfaction at the termination of the negotiations, and acknowledging the safe receipt of the deeds and transfers from the messenger he had sent. This was, of course, to carry out the fiction that for several weeks he had been in Paris on business connected with the floating of the company, and to enable him to prove analibiif ever required. Blain, when in India, took good care that it should be widely known that he intended to purchase the estates, so that his sudden possession would not be considered strange. There was a man, it afterwards transpired, who was actually staying at theGrandin Paris in the name of Blain, and he had posted the letter, while I further discovered that this ingenious swindler had actually borrowed the sum of two hundred thousand pounds for three days to pass through his bank, so that he might show that he had paid for the property.”
“Then Blain is in actual possession of the deeds, which only require the stamp of the courts in India for the property to become his?” Boyd observed.
“Yes,” responded my beloved. “But the fear that you have discovered the dead man’s identity has hitherto prevented him taking possession or raising money on the deeds. He has placed them somewhere in safety, I suppose, and is now most likely out of the country.”
“Absolutely astounding!” I gasped. Then, on reflection, I inquired the meaning of the cards which had so puzzled us.
“Horrible though it may seem,” she said, “they were used to cast lots as to who should actually administer the poison, being shuffled and dealt face downwards. There were fifty, only two of which were marked. It was, I have learnt, the mode in which the Anarchists of Zurich cast lots, the person receiving the one with the line to commit the crime, while whoever received the circle became the accomplice and protector. With grim disregard for consequences these very cards were afterwards used by the assassins and their victims to decide upon partners for whist, sometimes being placed beneath the plates at dinner when, on entering the room, the guests were allowed to choose their places, afterwards turning up their cards. This gave rise sometimes to great amusement. What would the unfortunate pair have thought could they have known the truth? Alas! I did not know it until too late, or I would have given them warning, regardless of the consequences.”
Boyd briefly explained how he had seen Blain throw something into the lake in St. James’s Park, whereupon Eva suggested that the object he thus got rid of was no doubt one of the poisoned coins with which Hartmann had supplied him at his request.
I referred to the incident of the telephone, and Eva explained how she had since discovered that Blain had made an inquiry by telephone, in full belief that it was Hartmann who had responded. When next day he discovered his mistake he saw how narrowly he had escaped the police. Mary’s letter to me had, no doubt, been a coincidence, but her subsequent visit was at her mother’s instigation, it having been discovered that I was aware of the terrible tragedy.
“You received some type-written letters?” Boyd observed. “Who wrote them?”
“Blain,” she replied, surprised that he should be aware of this. “He knew that I had discovered the secret, and wrote urging me to take the utmost precautions to preserve what he guardedly referred to as the Silence.”
“But you say that Madame herself took tea with her victims?” I said. “She did not suffer.”
“Certainly not,” responded my beloved. “In her expert hand these poisons, discovered by Hartmann, may be fatal to one person and perfectly harmless to another. She no doubt drank some prophylactic first, which at once counteracted any ill effect of poison taken afterwards. Hartmann seems to have re-discovered the secrets dead with the Borgias, for Madame can, I believe, secrete a swift and deadly poison within almost anything.”
“Where is she now?” asked Boyd quickly. “We must take immediate steps for her arrest, as well as Blain’s.”
“Madame has flown to the Continent, but where I have no idea,” she replied. “To-night I intended to go to Paris and try to obtain a situation as governess, for I feared to remain longer in England, knowing of the body of Hartmann lying in that closed room at the Hollies.”
“You must remain,” Boyd said quietly. “Your evidence will be required.”
“Ah, no! I cannot,” she declared, bursting into a torrent of tears. “After this confession I—” and her voice was choked by sobs as she covered her haggard face with her hands.
“After this confession, darling,” I said tenderly, “I love you none the less.”
Then, clasping her swaying figure to me in wild ecstasy, I felt the swell of her bosom against my breast, and I covered her cold, tear-stained cheeks with passionate kisses, while she, for the first time, raised her sweet full lips to mine in a fervid, passionate caress, and murmured that she loved me.
Ah! what joy was mine at that moment. A new life had been renewed within me, for I knew that by the sacred bond of an undying affection she was bound to me for ever.