“To be let. Furnished. Apply etc.”
“To be let. Furnished. Apply etc.”
The name of a local house-agent was given at the foot.
Now what prompted him to the act Gilead never knew; but in a moment he had decided to procure the key of the house and enter to make an examination. On his difficult way to the address given he ran across a friend, who particularly desired a talk with him.
“One minute,” said Gilead, and, running in to the agent’s stated his wishes. “I am in a hurry,” he said. “Would it trouble you to send the key on to my office?”
His name asked and given, the agent was all smiles.
“Certainly, Mr Balm—O, most certainly, sir! Would you wish our representative to accompany you?”
“No, no. Send the key, and I will choose my own time.”
He was bowed out, and the rest of the afternoon he spent over business matters. It was not till nearly six o’clock that, set free, he bethought himself of his purposed exploration and of his definite promise to Mrs Baxter, and started a second time for the Vauxhall Bridge Road.
The fog had so deepened during the interval that walking proved a difficulty and in some ways a danger. However, Gilead was naturally well acquainted with the locality, and the perils of no more than a single crossing were there to beset him. He reached the house at last after a calculated progress, and, mounting the shallow flight of steps to the door, paused a moment before fitting in the latchkey.
He was feeling suddenly odd, and disenchanted with his quest, conscious of a strong reluctance to leave even that turbid street—with its running links, and flares of sudden omnibuses, and boom of life however obscured—and enter into the darkness and mysticism of the empty house. He had ascertained that its owner desired to let it furnished during the period of his temporary absence abroad; and what then? He himself did not want to take it; neither was it possible for him in this murk and at this time of the evening to conduct any investigation worth the name.
“What an ass I am,” he thought. “Haven’t I had enough of empty houses?”
And at that, and the flush of sudden shame the memory evoked, he ran the key resolutely in, opened the door, entered, and clicked to the latch behind him.
Tingling in every vein, as he stood there in the numb, half paralyzing darkness, he felt for his electric torch and switched on the little friendly spark. It’s tiny light only seemed to make the gloom more terrific. He advanced a step or two—and a host of shadows seemed to scatter and fly noiselessly before him. They sped up the stairs, they disappeared round open doors; things ticked and scuttled, stealing into corners and squatting to whisper. Looking over his shoulder in a panic, he saw a white face watching him, and almost dropped the torch in the start he gave.
The rumble of a passing omnibus came like a rally to his nerves. He turned resolutely, though his hands were wet—and saw that the face was the pictured face of an old gentleman hanging upon the wall.
Again he turned, reassured—and felt that the painted eyes were following him. He stopped.
“It’s no good,” he thought; “and worse than useless. I’ll just make a cursory examination and come again to-morrow.”
Stepping on tiptoe, as though fearful of attracting secret attentions, he turned from the hall into the first of the two rooms that opened from it to his right, and flashed his little torch to and fro. So far as he could gather, it was merely like the hall, commonplace. From the usual oil-cloth, and the usual marbled paper, he had passed to the usual lace curtains, cheap plush chairs, rickety tripod tables, antimacassars, and an ebony over-mantel painted with birds and adorned with tawdry glass vases from the sixpenny-halfpenny shop. Its unimaginative philistinism was so utter as to convey a certain comfort; no ghost of the past could possibly walk in such an atmosphere of raw newness. Gilead breathed out a little easing sigh, and turned to go.
His foot was on the threshold, when he heard a sound that brought him to a stop, instant and startled. Someone outside was softly fitting a latchkey into the hall door!
He backed into the room, clicking off his light, and, half-closing the door, stood motionless behind it. The act had been instinctive, unreflecting, but, being done, must abide its own consequences.
In the meantime, hardly breathing, he was conscious that some human presence was in the hall; and the next moment he heard the front door softly closed.
“Ah!” said a voice, subdued but perfectly clear: “that is well done so far. What a good luck that you had the thought to secure Valkenburg’s key.”
Hamlin’s voice—the voice whose intonation still hung familiarly in his ear! Gilead’s nerves, in this sudden stress of danger, felt but undefined, tightened like bow-strings.
“I think of things. Perhaps you’ll get to understand that and do me justice in time.” It was a girl who answered, low and distinct. “What are you doing with that match-box?” she said.
“What does one generally do with a match-box?”
“Well, don’t do it. It might attract a neighbour or a policeman. I know the place well enough to find my way about it in the dark.”
“You’re a clever girl, Jennett” (Gilead gave ever so slight a start). “You can find your way to everything. I hardly expected you would turn up to your appointment in this fog. How long had you been waiting?”
“I got here when I told you in my wire that I should.”
“And with the key and all? By why here? Why not in the old place?”
“What a cur you are, Tizzy. Don’t you understand? Because she’s polluted it for me. If you want me back you must find me another place than that. You might have got through that little time of separation, I think, without filling it in with a fresh fancy.”
“Ah, there! You were the most unreasonably jealous, my darling.”
“Was I? You are lying, you know. What a d——d fool you must take me for. Well, just assure me, please, that your answer to my wire was God’s truth. You have got rid of her?”
“Yes, on my honour, Jennett, she is gone.”
“That’s well for you.”
“It is? You don’t mean to tell me you would really have gone those lengths in revenge?”
“Wouldn’t I? And further.”
“After all that I’d trusted to you?”
“What did I trust to you? I playedmypart faithfully, didn’t I—did the housemaid proper; goosed the poor postman—his face is before me now, with its sick, gone look, as I palmed the receipt that I pretended to put with a kiss into his pouch. Why Valkenburg made proposals to me, too, and handsome ones. I never told you that. But he did; and I was true to you; and all the time you were filling my place with that Barnes devil. I wonder I didn’t murder you both; but luckily I had a safer and a surer means to pay you out—the dummy parcel itself, which I hadn’t destroyed as you wanted me to, but had kept and hidden against accidents. You know that now, don’t you, and are willing to do anything to save your beastly skin?”
“Ah! You are very hard and cruel. What have you done with it?”
“All in good time. You thought you had got me safe enough, didn’t you, when I perjured my soul, for your sake, to ruin that miserable young fellow? I hadn’t found out about you then; but knowing you, I had had the wit to keep my piece of evidence as a precaution. My word would have gone for nothing by itself; but with that to back it you were dished and done for, Tizzy. I got just a fragment of pleasure out of the thought of your face when you received my letter, without an address, telling you what I’d kept and had in my power to use.”
“Did you? That is very well. I tell you it almost breaks the heart that loves you so much. Such cruel treachery!”
“Well, it was lucky for you I saw your advertisement. And now just tell me what you meant by talking about forgiveness in it.”
“It seems so base of you, little girl. You had chosen to misunderstand. My connection with Miss Barnes was one of sympathy and mutual assistance in a difficulty. You were never once forgotten by me—no, never; and I had to have a type-writer.”
“I’m a fool, Tizzy. I despise you and I mistrust you; but, God help me, I love you. I shall know why someday, I daresay. I don’t now; but I can’t help it. Do you know why I wired you to meet me here?”
“How can I?”
“It is hidden in this house, where I knew I could get it when I wanted it, having Valkenburg’s key. I didn’t fancy the risk of keeping it about me.”
“Where, Jennett, little darling?”
“Shall I tell you at last?”
“If you want to save your poor unhappy lover. Jennett, it is just time. There are suspicions awakened. Only to-day I had a visit from that stupid interfering ass, Balm of Lamb’s Agency, who came to enquire about things on behalf of the postman’s old mother.”
“It is hidden behind that picture on the wall.”
“Ah! My God! What a rash place! Valkenburg’s old father. Let me go, while I fetch it.”
“Tizzy!” The girl by her voice was crying hysterically. “Not for a moment. Think what I have done for your sake! Tizzy, I’m going to drop. Take me into the back room—there is a sofa there.”
Gilead, the skin of his scalp prickling, heard the two move slowly along the hall and enter the room beyond. His face was white and stern. The Providence which had brought him acquainted with the details of this infernal plot to ruin an innocent man would surely not stultify its own design at the last. The girl was still sobbing. Bracing every nerve to his task, he lost not an instant, but, treading like a cat, stole out into the hall, and reaching the picture, felt behind it unavailingly.
The sobs ceased suddenly. Desperate, he switched on his torch, saw a little white packet stuck between frame and canvas, seized his prize and made for the door. Even as he lifted the latch, there came a rush from the room behind him, a mad oath, a flash and slam, and a bullet splintered the panel close by his head. In another moment he was out and plunging for the steps. Something took his hat with a plop, and then the merciful fog received him, and he was running—running bareheaded for his life. A sense of uproar, of crackling fires seemed to goad him on and wing his steps; instinctively he had turned the corner out of the main road and was flying along Dorset Street; and then, all in a moment, he became conscious that his own racing heart was his sole company, and, recovering his reason, he slowed down and began to consider his bearings.
* * * * * * *
Mr Abel Hamlin ran straight into the arms of a contiguous police officer, who had been attracted by the sound of the shots. The revolver still being clutched in his hand, and his explanation failing to give satisfaction, he was incarcerated pending enquiries. These resulted—Gilead in the meantime having found his way by desperate courses to Scotland Yard—in his indefinite detention on the twin charges of conspiracy to defraud and attempted murder.
It was a heartless business, as it came to be revealed. Hamlin, Superintendent Ingram to the contrary, had really been in a ruinous financial fix; he was a creature all selfishness and sensuality, and the scheme, cleverly worked, seemed fairly safe from detection. The girl Jennett, his mistress and decoy, an actress and prestidigitateur by profession, had imposed herself as a servant upon Valkenburg to whom she was unknown. The Dutchman, though perfectly innocent of any share in the plot, was susceptible, the girl pretty and the bait took. Valkenburg, a traveller in diamonds, was led to expect the receipt of a parcel of stones from Hamlin, with whom he had had some past dealings; the parcel, as he was able to swear, was never delivered; Hamlin wrote to enquire as to the non-acknowledgment of its receipt, and so the conspiracy was launched. The decoy in the meantime had been plying the unhappy young postman with her coquetries; he took fire readily; on the morning of the delivery of the registered packet, she pretended to procure her master’s signature to the receipt, which, in the course of some playful passages under the mistletoe—it was Christmas time—she feigned to return with her own fair fingers to Baxter’s pocket-book, sending her victim on his way to doom and disgrace with a bounding heart and a mind wholly absorbed in its own amorous raptures. To the last the poor dupe had believed in her affection, and had hoped against hope, that she would exonerate him.
But Miss Jennett, when once he was disposed of, had discovered a more personal call upon her interests in the infidelity of her confederate, and the means he had taken to kill time during the weeks of their enforced separation. Promptly she had disappeared, and, from some unknown address, written to upbraid the delinquent with his treachery, and to inform him as to her precautionary preservation of the registered packet (it was found, when opened by Gilead in the presence of Superintendent Ingram, to contain a few fragments of coal, addressed, of course, to Valkenburg in Hamlin’s writing) and of her intention to use it for the purpose of revenging herself on him. The advertisement in the Agony Column had resulted, and finally, after a struggle with herself, she had telegraphed to her scoundrel to meet her outside the house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road—with what result here witnesseth.
The villain in chief received an exemplary sentence, and Baxter his Majesty’s gracious pardon for being innocent. But the Post Office, naturally enough, would not employ him again, and Gilead, great to the end, found a situation for him. As to Miss Jennett, she simply repeated her former tactics, and disappeared.
Therecame a certain September evening whose memory was destined to imprint itself ineffaceably on the souls of the three most intimately associated in the conduct of the Agency.
Gilead had left the office betimes to attend a meeting convened for the purpose of discussing theArts Education Bill, a measure which it was proposed to bring before Parliament, and for whose actual initiation he himself was more than anyone responsible. Its main purpose was to reform and direct popular taste in all matters which met the eye; to prevent the disfigurement of the land; to see that desirable sites were ennobled with suitable erections; to control the abuse of advertisements; to lead the common view by the ways of beauty and fitness to an appreciation of both. The promoters of the bill, men of a rare educational foresight, founded their propaganda on the truth that, while learning is subjective, taste is objective, and that it is of little use thinking to conduct towards a millennium of good taste through groves of architectural and other abominations which outrage every principle of it. Their idea was that, as oxygen enters by the mouth to purify the living blood, so taste must be taken in at the eyes to illuminate and refine the intellectual process, and that forcibly to educate the community to an understanding of good things, while confronting and environing it with the very opposite, is to be likened to putting a man into a lazaretto for a rest-cure. In short, they believed that the era of universal gentlehood which we all desire, and can only at present see squalidly foreshadowed in the cheap presumption engendered of compulsory education, is to be approached through the eyes rather than the intellect, and that every desecrated site, every wanton outrage on nature, every vulgar, tasteless and pretentious edifice allowed to be erected is by so much a set-back to the progress of race-refinement. Wherefore they proposed in the first instance the establishment of a Governmental Board of Callaesthetics, or Beauty-Science, whose expenses should be met by a levy on the local rates, and whose business it should be to consider the external plans of every building, public and private, it was proposed to alter or erect, and to approve or, if offensive to the cultivated eye, reject the same (the control of structural details was to remain in the hands of Municipal and local bodies, since these were business matters fit for men of business and demanding only practical qualifications).
The scheme, a very fond one to Gilead’s heart, need not here be discussed in detail. It aimed generally at the overthrow of the tyranny of the vulgarian; embodied a central Committee of art-experts, with official representatives in every capital town, and was immensely far-reaching in its purposes. And, if it was doomed to failure, it was not so doomed on practical grounds, but on the unquestionable liberty of the subject to make himself as offensive as he likes within the law.
On the night in question Gilead, after attending the meeting, had dined en famille with a Cabinet Minister in sympathy with its objects. He left early, purposing to pay a visit to the Agency—long-closed, of course—in order to consult some papers bearing on the matter. As, nodding to the porter who admitted him, he climbed the long stairs to his private room, a queer sense ofsomething accompanyingseized upon him all in an instant. It was a quite odd and unusual feeling, breaking into a preoccupation which had been profound. He looked right and left in a curious way, stopped, considered a minute—then, with a little laugh moved on and up. The feeling had gone: perhaps, he thought, it had outstripped him in that momentary pause. The little shock and throb of nerve evoked by the thought stopped him a second time. He gave a self-conscious look, first upwards then backwards, saw the hall empty and the porter gone, laughed once more, but uneasily, and turned the corner of the stairs that mounted to his room. Certainly he did pause in a quick trepidation as he fitted in the key. His breath fluttered uncomfortably; a sense of enormous isolation in those attics of swimming night gripped and astounded him; he began to think of the things that might come bubbling up from the wells of gloom beneath. But his courage was always the master of his imagination, potent as that was; and the next instant he had turned the key and entered. As he switched on the electric light, he saw a young woman standing above the desk by the blinded window.
In the first moment of discovery he would not doubt but that the figure was that of Miss Halifax herself, either remaining, or returned after hours, to get through some arrears of work. He would not doubt, I say, though he had never yet known the amanuensis moved to such a course; but in reality he was fighting for nerve and resolution to meet a shock which he foresaw to be inevitable. And the next instant it came. The figure turned, revealing itself that of a stranger, seemed to look at him intently, and in the very fact was gone.
For minutes Gilead remained perfectly motionless where he stood. Heroes, like monarchs, should meet death erect; and so had not he met and overcome it? He thought that if he had moved in the first shudder of the blow, he would have fallen and died. The realization that he—he himself—had seen an apparition, had endured that mortal experience from whose fear all take refuge in scepticism, was like a sudden shocking revelation of a friend’s treachery. Reason alone could surmount the horror, and he waited rigidly for reason to return.
When it did, he was surprised to find what emotions swept in with it. He had looked into the eyes of a tragedy deep beyond sounding. What it meant he could not know; yet some intimacy engendered of that soul-searching had awakened in him a pity profound beyond terror. His face was very pale, but his lips were firmly set, as he went about his business of investigating.
He found, and expected to find, nothing to explain the appearance. The room was empty of all but its customary appointments. Having satisfied himself—even as to the absurdest, most attenuated lurking-places—he switched off the light, locked the door deliberately behind him, and, descending the stairs, summoned the porter. He had just a single question to ask the man; he put it to him as nonchalantly as possible: he supposed, in short, that no lady had come to request an interview with him after closing-time, or had been invited to await his possible return. The answer was uncompromising, indignantly self-righteous, reassuring for the best of its worth. The porter knew his duty better; he was not to be bought or wheedled into such an abuse of trust. Gilead congratulated him, and went out into the night.
Its familiar commonplaces both comforted and jarred upon him. He felt like a convalescent from some near-mortal illness, welcoming back life while half-regretting his balked escape from it. But the direction he instinctively took brought solace to him with every step. It was over Miss Halifax’s desk that the apparition had bent; it was to Miss Halifax that he turned for reassurance and explanation.
Would she have gone to bed? He put on agitated pace with the thought. The flat was close by, and he was not long in reaching it. Finding the lift-porter absent, he ran up the stairs in his impatience, and came upon the gentleman himself in whispering colloquy with the maid at the young lady’s door. The two were full of confusion; he put it and them pleasantly by, intimating that he would announce himself. A sound of music came from the drawing-room, and, without ceremony in his urgency, he opened the door softly and entered. Miss Halifax was seated at the piano, and over her, his arm familiarly wreathed about her neck, stood Herbert Nestle.
They both started, and, turning on the instant, the girl rose to her feet.
“Mr Balm!” she whispered. The colour fled from her face as he looked at her; the secretary stood, as he had stepped suddenly back, hanging his head sheepishly. Without a moment’s hesitation, and with a smile on his lips, Gilead shut the door and hurried forward.
“O! you must forgive me,” he said. “It is quite undesigned—quite. But, being so, let us all congratulate ourselves on this accident. I have long suspected this, believe me, and I wish you both happiness with all my heart. But why would you never tell me? Be assured I should have honoured and rejoiced in the confidence.”
Vera’s lips moved, but no sound came from them. She glanced at the secretary; he lifted his head and cleared his throat in a sudden spasm. His face was as pale as the young lady’s; his eyes, seen through his glasses, expressed even a magnified perturbation.
“I—I was on the point of going, sir,” he said. “You—you imply—you anticipate, at least.”
“I hope not; I am sure not,” answered Gilead gravely. “You must balance the significance of your words, Nestle. You should know me sufficiently by this time to trust in the fullness of my sympathy. There is no reason in the world why this should longer be kept a secret; and if you ever had any doubts as to my personal approval, so far as it is in question, rest convinced that I could imagine no union more ideally conceived. You will not consider yourselves,” he said, his voice quivering a little, “when wedded and because wedded, the less wedded to our joint interests, I am certain.”
With tears springing to her eyes, the young lady took an impulsive step forward.
“Mr Balm,” she began—“this mistake—”
He interrupted her, gently but peremptorily:—
“Was diffidence ever so perverse! It is no mistake; it must be none. I have not failed to observe, I say; nor must Herbert fail to understand the dishonour his shyness does you by implication. Well, if it is a fact that he was on the point of going—”
“Absolutely, sir,” said the secretary.
“Then,” said Gilead, with a smile, “I will beg you, Nestle, to entrust this rare possession to me for a few minutes. I had come, in fact, in an emergency, to consult Miss Halifax; and hence my intrusion—I will not call it mistimed.”
There was no gainsaying his ruling. He himself saw the secretary to the door, and parted with him with a squeeze of the hand.
“For her sake, Nestle,” he said, “your engagement must not go longer unacknowledged.”
Returning to the room, he found the girl toying with some music at the piano, her back turned to him. He stood silent a moment; and then he exclaimed, with a scarce perceptible sigh:—
“I can say no more in honour now than God bless you both. Miss Halifax—”
A little to his surprise she faced round on him on the instant, her cheeks like sunset roses. Her eyes were sparkling; a psychologist might have read in their expression an impatience of his intolerable stupidity—or chivalry. But in the very act a consciousness of something unusual in his look startled and checked her; and the shadow, as it were, of a desperate word on her lips faded and passed.
“Mr Balm,” she said—her breath came quick—“what is it? What is the matter?”
He looked straight into her eyes.
“I have seen a ghost,” he said.
She was the last from being feminine in the foolish sense. She searched his face a moment; then, her own very white, seated herself on the music-stool, and looked up at him steadily.
“Whose?” she said.
“Ah!” he answered—“I thought perhaps you could tell me.”
“I!” she exclaimed.
“I had a reason for returning to the office to-night,” he said. “That was only a few minutes ago. As I mounted the stairs it seemed to me that something went beside me, and, when I paused, passed on and up. I was in a deep abstraction at the time, and—”
“The condition most favourable, they say, to ghost-seeing.”
“Yes, I can understand it—when the consciousness of externals falls away. I felt odd—vaguely, indescribably expectant of something; and, when I opened the door, it was there—the figure of a young woman.”
Her eyes never left his face; but her lips, though they moved, uttered no sound.
“It stood,” he said, “in the corner by the window, leaning over your desk. As I regarded it, it turned, looked at me, and was gone.” He paused a moment, before he went on. “I was calm on the whole; I searched the room thoroughly; there was no explanation. Some might say, perhaps, that the very nature of our business invites its visitations. If you feel nervous—that spot, henceforth, and its associations—”
She rose hurriedly, interrupting him. Seeing her so white, he instinctively advanced an arm to her support. She caught and held to it, more in her secret heart from emotion than weakness.
“I would not surrender it—the place where I sit—for the world,” she said, in a low full voice—“the least if I thought that any troubled soul had sought it for help and counsel.”
“Now, before God,” said Gilead, “that is to regard it in the gentle light—not Christian but Christlike. Yes, some troubled soul. You shame me out of fear.”
“Tell me,” she said, looking in his face—“did you see this apparition plainly?”
“For the moment,” he answered, “as plainly as I see you now.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Yes, I can describe it. It bore the appearance of—no, itwasa young woman, very young and in a way attractive. There was an expression on her face—how can I explain it? Can you imagine a spoilt child, its tearful pettishness corrected for the first time in its life by a heavy blow? The shock, the amazement, the rising flood of self-pity—they seemed all there in suspense. I am putting it very badly, I know, but that is the impression it conveyed to me. As to distinctive features, there was a very definite vertical line between the eyebrows, apparent even in repose, and quite peculiar in so pretty a face. That, and the protruding very scarlet lower lip—but, after all, I am no more than generalizing; and it was vivid—ineffaceable. Does it suggest anything whatever to you?”
“I cannot be quite sure—the general impression—tell me, how was she dressed?”
“Ah! dressed? I am not certain I can remember. She was slight; she wore a large black mushroom-shaped hat with cherries in it; I noticed that her neck was white, because her frock was cut rather low about it, and that her arms were bare from the elbow. And I noticed—yes, I noticed that she had on a wedding-ring, for her closed left hand was lifted to the light.”
“It was not a wedding-ring. It was a little common turquoise thing, the stones turned inwards to her palm to deceive.”
“Miss Halifax! Good God! You know who it was?”
“Yes, I know,” she answered, hardly above a whisper—“I am sure I know. The hat—yes, and the description. She was to have come to me again in her need, poor wretched importunate child, if all else failed—and it has failed.”
She was so patently agitated, that he turned away during the minute in which she fought to recover herself.
“Now,” she said, “let us talk it over, please. You have described, I haven’t a doubt, poor Cicely Fleming. She was one, if not of the submerged tenth, of those that buoy themselves on scraps of driftwood and float on for a little—a typist, trained in an office, and afterwards seeking to make herself an independence through a small private connection. I need not dwell upon her story. So many of them, lacking the essential fibre, go under. Passionate, wrong-headed, persistent only in her claim to more consideration than she deserved, she fell an easy prey to flattery. A little better luck—for her—and she might have become a good man’s vixen; as it was, a villain found and used her. He came in the guise of a client—she confessed it all to me—and when sin called for its wages, he left her alone to bear the penalty, and disappeared.
“You will understand, Mr Balm, will you not? The girl was only one of the many whose misery is my province. In her despair she advertised for a little loan of fifteen pounds to tide her over a trouble. I understood, of course, and had her here. That was a week ago, perhaps. She was ready with her poor story—was married, of course, in all but the name. She would not give me his. She still had hopes that his desertion was only temporary—easy of explanation; and she would not yield his name to scandal. He had promised her before he went that he would let her know where to follow him; and she had promised for her part to be loyal and silent. Only the weeks had gone on, and he had made no sign; and at length, driven to desperation—”
“Yes, yes—she advertised.”
“She could not work; her rent was in arrears; I made her—I hope you will justify me, Mr Balm; she so clung to me; so opened her poor little bursting heart, with all its load of passion and vanity—I made her an advance provisionally, with a promise of further help if she should need and apply to me again.”
“Ijustify you? I bless you and congratulate myself.”
The girl rose to her feet, greatly overcome.
“She is only one,” she said; “and there are so many. Why, of all, is it she to return and haunt us? What has happened? What does it presage?”
“Hush!” said Gilead. “You must not give way. That is for me to discover. Tell me—did she ever give you her address?”
“O, yes! It is in the York Road, not far from Waterloo Station. I have it written down. I will fetch it for you.”
He glanced about him when he was left alone. This room, so warm and fragrant and quiet! Its intimacy was to count henceforth among the ghosts of lost and vanished things. He had been haunted and doubly haunted this night; but the spectre of a hopeless passion—he recognized it now, had come to realize it in a moment—was the spirit potent above all others to possess and absorb a man. In its shadow all lesser visitations sank into insignificance.
“Are you not frightened?” said the girl, as, returning, she put the address into his hand.
“No,” he said, with a smile. “There is nothing necessarily terrifying in this. Psychists will tell you that intense desire may, and often does, manifest itself in bodily shape to its object. What more likely than that Miss Fleming, being seized with an ungovernable wish to consult you, flew astrally to the one spot she associated with your presence?”
“O! I hope so,” she answered earnestly. “I hope it is nothing worse than that. You are not going there to-night?”
“Yes, to-night.”
“But—”
“It would be unadvisable, cruel, to delay. I had better see her, if possible, at once—at least learn what I can of her movements.”
She stopped him an instant to say: “You never rest or spare yourself where help may be given”—and thereafter the look in her eyes alone haunted him.
He went like a soul exalted through some great renunciation; his flesh knew no tremors nor his spirit weakness. It was but a few minutes’ drive, at top speed, to his destination; it seemed to him a sparrow flight from kerb to kerb.
Big Ben was booming out eleven as he mounted three or four steps to a dingy door in the York Road. The house to which it belonged was of the typical low-London pattern. It was one of a row—one of a black, sooty wall of houses, so like its neighbours and its neighbours’ neighbours inside and out, that, if Cogia Hassan had come in the night and played general post with the numbers of them all, the life of the terrace would probably have continued with as little sense of dislocation as if number ten’s letters were not being delivered at number fourteen, or number twelve’s lodger had not come home at midnight to sup on number eight’s bread and cheese. Gilead looked down into the squalid area and up at the dirty fanlight over the door, where a card, warped and bleared with age, bent curiously to canvas the unlikely likelihood of his applying for the apartments it advertised; and he wondered if the mines, the docks, Princetown itself, were not preferable to existence in such a place, so dreary, so colourless, so uneventful.
He had time to consider, and was indeed beginning to judge his mission fruitless for that night, when the door opened suddenly, and a large man with a candle in his hand appeared standing in the opening.
“O!” said Gilead. “Good evening to you. Are you the landlord?”
At the acceptable word, the individual backed heavily, motioning him to enter. Gilead had been prepared for the typical lodging-house shrew, tart, hungry, aggressive; instead, he saw before him a substantial churchy gentleman, like a sanctimonious verger, with a moist lip and side-whiskers. His waistcoat and trousers were black; his coat was off, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow.
“I have come,” said Gilead, “to enquire about a Miss Fleming. Does she live here?”
A certain tentative smile, oily and ineffable, left the man’s lips on the instant.
“Work?” said he. “It’s late to come on business.”
“It’s late, as you say. Is she up?”
“She’s up to too much of this sort of thing to suit my book,” said the landlord, with a disagreeable change of manner. “I don’t keep your kind of shop, mister. No, she’s not up, and she’s not in.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“I believe you do.”
“Will you please to get out, now, or shall I call the police?”
“I will save you the trouble,” said Gilead. In fact he had observed the approach on the moment of a constable known to him. “Gregory,” he said, “will you come here a minute. This person is pleased to question my credentials. I only ask you to convince him.”
“O! I’ll convince him sharp enough, Mr Balm, sir,” said the officer.
“I meant no offence,” said the landlord, in an injured voice.
“You have given none,” said Gilead. “On the contrary, I gather some reassurance from your manner. Only you jump too hastily to conclusions, Mr —?”
“Nolan,” said the constable.
“Now, Mr Nolan,” said Gilead, “I ask you, in the presence of this officer, does Miss Fleming live here?”
The man looked from one to the other. His face perspired.
“She did,” he said, “until three days ago.”
“Where has she gone?”
“How am I to know?”
“That is not for me to say. But I intend to find out.”
“I don’t want to prevent you,” said the man—“before God I don’t. She owed me money.”
“She was given money to pay you.”
“She didn’t pay me, then—not in full. What are you driving at? I’ll tell you the truth—every word of it so far as I’m concerned.”
“Observe, Gregory,” said Gilead.
“She’s lodged with me a year and more,” said the landlord. “I don’t know who she was nor where she come from. We can’t afford to be particular here about references. It was enough for me that she kept a typewriter and paid her rent off it. People visited her on business—of course they did. It was no call of mine to enquire into their characters—no, not even when they left late. There was a’many of them, men and women; and I swear I haven’t even my suspicions. She came to be in trouble—it was plain enough to see; and then her customers fell off. She owed me money, I say; and I told her she must go. Humanity’s a luxury for the rich, and I couldn’t afford it. At the last she found me something on account; and at the last of all she came to tell me that it was all right, that he was going to do the handsome thing by her, and that he had written to her to join him. Wild horses wouldn’t drag from her where, or what was the man’s name. She had promised him, she said; and, once arrived, she was going to write to me and settle my account. I saw her off myself from Waterloo. I always liked the girl, in spite of her temper, and I carried down her bag for her, and saw her start by the Windsor train. That was three days ago, and an end of her so far as any message to me is concerned.”
“She went by the Windsor train, you say?”
“That is so, sir—third class single; and, as she had only a fi-pun note left, I lent her a half sovereign to pay for her ticket, and she gave me eight shillings change. It’s the truth. What reason should I have to deceive you?”
“None whatever; and no intention.”
To the landlord’s astonishment, the stranger shook him warmly by the hand.
“You acted according to your lights,” said Gilead; “and they shone on the whole. You have no suspicion where she’s gone?”
“Not a ghost, sir.”
“Or of the man’s name?”
“Even less, if possible.”
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mr Nolan. Good-night!”
“Gregory,” said Gilead, as, leaving the petrified householder, he walked away with the constable, “this is all Greek to you, of course. Isn’t there some saying about a nod sufficing for a wise man and a rod for a fool?”
“I daresay there is, Mr Balm.”
“I wonder which I am? Windsor is a terminus on the South Western, isn’t it, and she took the Windsor train, third class single? Her ticket cost two shillings—twenty-four miles at a penny a mile. That ought to tell us what station she was bound for.”
“It ought, sir. I think you’re very clever.”
“O, don’t anticipate! The rod may be in pickle for me yet. Well, it’s too late to put it to the proof. For to-night good-night, Gregory.”
Nevertheless he went to the station, too restless to postpone conclusions altogether. Applying his test to the time-table, he found that the twenty-four mile theory carried him to Datchet—not a mile before or beyond. There was a train that started at ten minutes after midnight. Should he dare everything and go by it?
A taxicab whirled him to his rooms, waited while his whirled together a few necessaries, whirled him back again. At 1.18 A.M. he was hammering, still highly strung, at the door of the solitary inn in Datchet.
Reason and reaction only came with the morning. His prescience and his calculations seemed all ridiculously out of gear. He quite blushed over his coffee and kidney, thinking of the shame of the castigation he had earned for his shoulders. No doubt the two shillings had represented only part of the price of the ticket, the remainder being supplied from Miss Fleming’s own pocket. Or perhaps she had taken but not used the whole of that sum, retaining a few pence for tips. Either way hopelessly threw out his reckoning.
He felt so discomfited all of a sudden, that he was almost on the point of taking the next train back to London. However, he forbore, deciding for his restoration on a balmy day in the country; and, evading, even in thought, all tentative enquiries as to recent arrivals in the village, he set out after breakfast for a walk.
It was a sweet and glowing morning of late September, frank, fresh and life-stirring—the last to associate itself with thoughts of death and apparitions. The whole country seemed enjoying a restful convalescence from the low fever of August; the blatant tripper had fled; blazers of garish hue flowered no longer among the rushed; the sweeping cry of the swallows cut the wide air in place of chaff and banjo. Walking round by the Victoria Bridge, Gilead stopped to lean over the parapet and drink in the quiet beauty of the scene.
To his right stretched the stately tree-haunted swards of the Home Park, the foliage just touched as with healthy sunburn. A royal lodge with a pleasant garden watched the bridge-end. Below, the water sparkled on in a never-ending pageant of ripples. To the left a long withy-bed, bushed with pale-leafed alders, reached away towards the village in a green perspective. Here was favourite mooring-ground for houseboats, since the royal demesne on one side and the osiers on the other kept the place private and unapproachable. In August one might see a dozen of them anchored off the willow-bank—vessels of varying degrees of importance, from the magnificent floating pleasure-house, to the cocky little bomb-ketch with a cuddy for cooking and sleeping-place. Now, however, all were gone but two—a huge hulk of a thing, patently deserted and dismantled, which lay away towards Datchet, and a much smaller affair, moored just clear of a patch of rushes but a long stone’s-throw from the bridge on which he stood.
Gilead wished to find that this boat was abandoned also. There was not a soul to be seen or heard anywhere; he liked to think that the place was utterly given over to Autumn and its fragrant silences. But in that he was to be disappointed. As he leaned, half hypnotised, watching the running water, and conscious of the pale green oblong of the little houseboat coming indistinctly into his field of vision, of a sudden something moving there caught his attention, and he raised his head. A man in grey flannels and a low-brimmed Panama hat was stepping from its side into a rowing skiff, and the next moment he had cast off and was pulling towards the bridge.
As the boat approached, Gilead saw that there was a woman seated in her stern. He had not observed her enter, and was quite startled for the moment. But the next, he reflected that his abstraction might easily account for the mistake, and he smiled over his own befooling.
But the smile, in the very instant of its birth, withered from his lips. The skiff came on fast, urged by muscular, one might have thought furious arms, and as its occupants forged into clear range, he saw bare arms, and a bare neck, and a black mushroom-shaped hat with cherries in it.
His heart seemed to leap so that it left a physical pain. He stood rigid, preparing for the charge; and the next moment the boat had swept under the bridge, carrying with and in it the apparition of last night.
With its vanishing, nerve returned to him. He hurried across the road to see the boat shoot from the further side; yet, quick as he was, the rower’s energy was so great that it was already three times its own length beyond. As he caught at the railing, the man, as if moved by some telepathic instinct, lifted his face and saw him. He stopped on the instant, resting on his sculls.
A minute must have passed thus while they regarded one another, each perfectly still in his place. Neither did the figure of the girl, now with its back to Gilead, make the least movement. The boat, with the way on it, continued to float up-stream; the face of the staring man grew smaller and less distinct; but it was always to Gilead a stiff blotch of yellow, like the face of a rigid corpse.
He could not have said why it struck him thus, but so it did. It was a not uncomely face, of the strong blunt-featured type, in itself. The man had looked young, though past his first youth—a muscular, compact fellow, with curly dark hair and a hint of swagger and vulgarity. The cock of his hat, the brilliant scarf about his waist, confessed the bounder; yet what did a bounder on the river in late-September? Something redeeming, the watcher hoped and prayed. Yet there had seemed little that was human in that face. It had contrasted oddly with the pink and white of the girl’s, just glimpsed in passing. The apparition’s was the reassuring one of the two.
Suddenly, as he looked, the rower resumed his sculls; but he paddled slowly, his eyes on the figure on the bridge all the while. Not until the boat had vanished round a bend were they, Gilead felt, withdrawn, releasing him to his own thoughts.
Those were strange enough in all conscience—compact of wonder and perplexity. It was a certain comfort to him to find his theory vindicated; that he had run his quarry actually to earth—or water. It was a comfort also to find that last night’s case, psychically, was one of those, as he had suggested, of astral visitation, and that his ghost had represented no disembodied spirit. The girl had passed at this moment beneath his eyes alive and in the flesh, which laid all haunting of a worser suspicion. At the same time what intensity of longing had materialized her spirit in Miss Halifax’s place, and how was he, without laying himself open to a charge of insufferable interference, to find out?
He crossed the bridge again, and stared at the pale-green houseboat. It lay very solitary, well off the bank, in a deep pool near the rushes. As far as he could make out, it appeared a luxurious well-fitted craft of moderate size, with an over awning and plenty of bright brass about it; while, swinging at its stern was a smart racing punt. Well, that told him nothing, unless perhaps that its owner was independent and well-to-do. He might discover, maybe, more at Datchet.
Oddly preoccupied, he continued his walk, lunched at Windsor, and leisurely towards evening returned to the village and strolled down upon the hard. The river looked pleasantly inviting, and a thought occurred to him. Averse from exciting too much curiosity, he decided upon hiring a boat and boatman, and, while being pulled up-stream, putting what cautious questions should occur to him. A minute or two later he was afloat.
“I was looking over the bridge this morning,” he said presently. “Who owns that green houseboat near by?”
“TheDragonfly, sir? Name of Dangerfield, sir,” said the man. “He’s said to be an acting gentleman. He took it off of another party for the season.”
“He makes the season a late one, it seems.” The man laughed—significantly, Gilead fancied. “Honeymooning, perhaps?” he continued. “I saw him, as I passed, put off with a lady.”
“Yes, I seen her,” said the man—“we all seen her, and like her looks as little as he seems to. It’s not his first. They comes and goes, and we asks no questions. This one turned up from nowhere three days ago. She was just there; and maybe in a week or so she’ll be gone. O, he’s a caution!”
Gilead bit his lip, considering awhile. “Whydon’t you like her looks?” he asked suddenly.
The man paused in his rowing to squeeze his mouth together.
“Why?” he said vacantly. “I shouldn’t fancy her for a mate, that’s all. Mostly temper in a face makes a man hot to look at it, but hers turns one cold. It’s my opinion he’s hooked a fish this time that’s one too many for him. He looks as if he’d like to shake her off, and can’t, and is mortal afeard of being pulled in himself. They’re up and down the river these three days—up and down. She might, for all the love that’s lost between ’em, be in another boat, and he bursting himself trying to pull away from her. Ho-ho! It’s a queer start—and here they come, too!”
Gilead sat up. They had reached the withy-bed, and suddenly round the counter of the big dismantled houseboat shot the skiff with the man and woman in it. It would have moved faster than before in any case going down-stream; but no normal pace appeared sufficient for the rower, who sculled with a fury that seemed to make the planks of the frail craft stretch and gape. From time to time, since his companion sat without movement not steering, he would turn his head to snatch a course; and it was in one of these glances that, when close upon it, he saw the other boat.
As instantly as in the morning he stopped. The skiff sped past and in a moment was twenty astern.
“If he asked my advice I should say a liver-pill,” said the boatman. “Did you see his face, sir?”
Gilead nodded. How could he have failed to—or that other, the face of last night? It had not looked at him; its eyes, he had seen, were fixed unwinkingly on the livid mask before them. But there had been the same expression of startled resentment, the same suggestion of obstinate importunateness, the same frowning vertical line between the brows, the same full lower lip, so full and so scarlet that it might have stood for a vampire’s gorged with blood.
“Hullo!” said the boatman; “he’s turning, by his looks, to come after us!”
He put his back into his work; but sure enough, sturdily as he pulled, the skiff overhauled them. More than half way up the withy-bed it passed, hugging the shore, so that the faces were sunk in shadow.
“Keep it up,” said Gilead. “I want you to take me to theDragonfly.”
He had made up his mind in that moment. After all, Cicely Fleming had sought the help of the Agency, and was entitled to its advice and, if necessary, its protection. He could not altogether ignore that shadowy appeal. It must have portended something, and it would be base to turn away, leaving it unquestioned.
The boatman bending to his task, the skiff gained so little on them that at the last reach, coming out into the open to avoid the rushes, it was a bare fifty yards ahead as it made straight for the pale-green houseboat lying solitary on the water. But it had kept, and even increased its lead a little as it ran home and the man leapt on board and disappeared into the saloon.
Gilead could not guess why he thus, and so obviously, fled to escape him. He felt his own task to be a gentle and propitiatory one, and he had no intention of imperilling its object by assuming any impertinently censorious attitude. Moreover, how was his intention foreseen—unless, indeed, the girl herself had recognised and explained him? He saw her, just an instant, standing at the door; and then she too vanished.
A score of strokes now, and they were across the intervening space, when, at the moment the boatman unshipped his left scull, to run under theDragonfly’scounter, sudden and startling a shot slammed out from within. The man, gripping at the gunwale, slipped his hand in the shock, then caught on again and held.
“God of mercy, sir!” he exclaimed. “What’s that?”
He had hardly spoken when Gilead, with a white face, was up and on board. He ran round, and was out of sight in an instant. Immediately a faint cry came to the ears of the waiting man. He hallooed in answer, but shakily, and sat sweating in his place. Suddenly his fare reappeared, but approaching agitated from the further end.
“He’s shot himself through the head,” said Gilead hoarsely. “The revolver’s in his hand. You must fasten on and come up. Good God—the girl! What’s become of her? I’ve been right through the boat.”
The man heaved himself, like a rheumatic creature, to his feet. His cheeks were patched with yellow; he fancied the job the least in the world. But he came, and saw; and was very sick by and by.
“Dead!” he whispered. “A man can’t live without a head.”
“But what’s become of her?”
“She must be hiding—she can’t have got away; or did he—no, there was only one shot.”
They hunted high and low; they ransacked every corner.
“I saw her standing there—at the door—but a moment ago,” said Gilead, gulping.
The boat lay moored in its placid pool; everything around slept quiet and unruffled; not a ripple, not a swaying in the reeds was there to account for the instant disappearance. The punt swung by its painter; the skiff floated as it had been run in, its nose wedged under the counter. Suddenly the man gripped Gilead’s sleeve, and pointed.
“Look, sir,” he said—“them cushions where she sat!”