CHAPTER III.
The Velvet Glove.
Betty was seated before her mirror, gazing somewhat doubtfully from the small round box of rouge in her hand to her wan reflection. Dare she hope successfully to conceal the ravages of a sleepless, tortured night? Her cheeks and very lips were blanched and her eyes sunken and heavily circled. Only the birthmark, like a scarlet stain, glowed sullenly and served but to accentuate her pallor. It were better by far that her employer's keen eyes should note a condition which she could attribute to illness than that her effort to conceal it would be so palpable as to invite suspicion of a graver nature.
How she had managed to reach her room after the shock of her tragic discovery, she could not have told. No memory remained with her of that swift silent flight from the room of death. She only knew that she found herself back in bed once more, trembling in every limb and with an icy, pulseless void in her breast where her heart had been. Reason itself seemed to have fled, and her thoughts become a whirling phantasmagoria of horror in which but one thing stood out as if stamped indelibly upon her mind: the face of the slain man.
It floated before her in the darkness as distinctly as the pitiless glare of her torch had revealed it, strangely calm and detached amid the debris of the devastated room below, and the girl cowered as if once more in its dread presence.
For hours which seemed like years she lay in an agony of expectancy, waiting for a cry of alarm when the inevitable discovery should be made. But no sound broke the tomb-like stillness save once, when a vague muffled thud came to her ears. Even that she could not be sure of, for her senses were tottering on the verge of hysteria, and the night passed in the hideous unreality of a dream.
With the dawn came utter exhaustion, but she desperately combatted its lethargy, in fear lest sleep bring a nightmare which would wring from her unconscious lips a shriek of betrayal.
The hazy patch of light at her window broadened into day and at last faint but unmistakable sounds came to her from below. The servants were stirring, and surely now, at any moment, the alarm would be raised.
Wonder succeeded expectancy as the minutes passed and the normal tranquility of the house remained unbroken. At length, unable to endure the torture of inaction, she had arisen. Whatever the immediate future held in store, she, at least, must appear ignorant of all that had occurred during the silent watches of the night.
The breakfast gong sounded as she replaced her rouge unused in the drawer, and with leaden feet she descended the stairs. The door of the dining-room was open and from within it issued the cheerful clatter of silver and purr of the coffee urn.
As if hypnotized, Betty made her way down the hall but paused involuntarily on the threshold. The room was in perfect order, the furniture arranged as usual; even the great cut-glass bowl, which she had seen only a few hours before shattered into a score of fragments, stood whole and unmarred in its accustomed place upon the sideboard.
The girl's eyes turned incredulously to the hearth where the ghastly figure had lain. It was spic and span, and the pale gray of the silken rug showed no slightest trace of the sinister pool which had reddened it a few short hours before. The bright sunlight, streaming in between the curtains at the window, added the last touch of solid reality to the scene, and Betty felt that her sanity was rocking in the balance. Had she indeed been the victim of some fearful hallucination? Was the tragedy upon which she had stumbled but the figment of a dream?
All at once she became conscious of eyes upon her and turned sharply. Mrs. Atterbury stood just behind her, smiling her calm, inscrutable smile.
"Good morning, my dear. Did you sleep well?"
"Not very." Betty forced her stiffened lips to frame the words. "I awoke toward morning with a terrific headache, but it is better now."
She stood boldly, with a shaft of sunlight full upon her face, conscious of the keen scrutiny to which she was being subjected, but determined to avoid possible suspicion by as realistic a semblance of candor as she could command.
The pause seemed interminable, but Mrs. Atterbury broke it at last.
"You are very pale. I must give you a headache powder before your coffee. Welch!"
A figure moved in the shadowed corner of the china closet, and Betty all but cried out in dismay. Had the sly, soft-footed butler been standing there, silently noting her hesitation on the threshold, and her significant glances about the room?
"Madame?"
"Tell Caroline to give you one of the powders from the blue box in my medicine chest; remember, the blue box."
"Yes, Madame."
Mrs. Atterbury seated herself in her accustomed place, and Betty took the chair opposite. She dared not refuse the proffered medicine but a hideous fear gripped her. Suppose her subterfuge had been suspected and she was now to be done away with, like that other whose body she had seen! Or had he really never existed, save in her distraught imagination?
She managed to drink her coffee, but the food repelled her. As her nerves steadied and self-command returned to her, she furtively studied the faces of her employer and the butler. There was no mistaking the significance of their suddenly acute espionage. She could not account to herself for the magic rehabilitation of the room, but as the chaos of her mind subsided one fact resolved itself irrefutably; the event of the night had been no dream or vision born of hysteria.
Upon that rug so miraculously cleansed had lain the body of the murdered man. How it had been spirited away, or how, indeed, the intruder had gained entrance, and the violent struggle which the condition of the room had indicated could take place without its noise alarming the house, were mysteries Betty made no attempt to solve.
Every sense was alert to her own danger, and she realized that her very life depended now upon her powers of dissimulation. The watchers had become the watched, and she noted that Welch's pasty face was gray in the strong light of morning and his shifty, ratlike eyes darted furtively over his shoulder when he crossed before the hearth.
Mrs. Atterbury, too, left her food practically untouched, and the hand with which she raised her cup shook visibly, but her indomitable brain was evidently schooled to the utmost concentration, for immediately after the farce of breakfast was concluded she conducted Betty to the library and dictated steadily for more than two hours.
The social letters were devoid of interest to the girl, and under the stress of the moment seemed curiously banal. Those concerning financial matters were for the most part unintelligible, but she strove to fix her mind on them and banish the hideous vision which still obsessed her. No allusion was made to the private letters marked with a cross, nor did Mrs. Atterbury dictate any reply to the cryptic communication concerning five thousand sheep which had arrived on the previous day.
However, when the voluminous correspondence had been seemingly disposed of and Betty's eyes were turning longingly toward the crisp sunshine beyond the window, Mrs. Atterbury rose and going to a tall, narrow bookcase built in a corner of the wall, swung it nonchalantly outward with a light practised touch.
A compact steel safe was revealed, imbedded in the solid brick of the wall, and Betty watched eagerly, striving to note each twirl and stop of the combination as the other woman swiftly manipulated it. With a final click the door swung open, disclosing row after row of numbered pigeonholes like a post-office rack, each containing its quota of long, legal-looking envelopes.
The girl's gaze was riveted, tense and fascinated upon the movements of her employer, and unhidden there crossed her face once more that sly, subtle look of Machiavelian cunning and triumph, maturing yet debasing its artless charm.
Had Mrs. Atterbury turned at that moment she might have read a warning in the silent strained figure, but she was engrossed in her occupation. When at length she selected a packet and closing the safe carefully came back to her desk, the girl was rearranging its contents, her face averted.
"Here are rough drafts of some letters which I want you to copy for me. Be careful that you transcribe them exactly; I think you will find them readily legible. When you have finished, mark the envelopes with a cross and place them with the others, for Welch to mail."
The new task occupied Betty until lunch time, and when Welch appeared with her tray, as on the previous day, she ate with relish, grateful to escape the ordeal of another hour in that room of mystery under the Argus eyes of Mrs. Atterbury and her servitor.
The former returned as she concluded her simple meal.
"You have finished the letters? Good! I can see that you are going to be a valuable aid. Your predecessor, Inez Harly, was a conscientious girl, but stupid—!" Mrs. Atterbury rolled her eyes with an expressive shrug. "My dear, have you ever done any library work at home in—let me see, where did you come from?—Greenville, Iowa?"
"'Library work'?" Betty repeated with a smile. "Our community was not important enough to have attracted the attention of Mr. Carnegie, but we had quite an extensive library of our own, and I always took care of it for my—my mother."
If Mrs. Atterbury noted the odd hesitation in the last words she gave no sign.
"Then you understand the rearrangement, classification and listing of books? I wonder if you will attend to mine? There are, I believe, over four hundred in this room alone and many others are scattered practically all over the house. The sets are all in a jumble and I never seem able to put my hand on any particular volume when I want it."
"I think I can do it." Betty's eyes had turned again wistfully to the window and her heart sank. "It will take me several days, I am afraid, but if you have nothing more pressing for me to do—"
"I haven't at the moment." Mrs. Atterbury moved toward the door. "I shall be glad if you will begin this afternoon. Take all the time you require and when the books are arranged, please catalogue them for me. There are a few rare volumes among them which may interest you, if you are a student. I will send for you when Miss Pope comes."
The books were in an almost hopeless state of confusion and Betty had no mind for her task. She was still shaken with the horror of the previous night's discovery, and the imperturbability of the other woman had suggested to her a new and startling train of thought. What if Mrs. Atterbury herself were ignorant of the tragedy which had taken place beneath her roof? Could it have been the work of Welch? The girl had read the evidence of his guilty knowledge unmistakably stamped upon his elemental, brutish face that morning, but Mrs. Atterbury's inscrutable countenance defied analysis.
The continued strain was telling upon the girl and she longed unspeakably for the cold, bracing air of out of doors, but it was evident that her employer intended to grant her no leisure that day. Could the rearrangement of the books have been merely an expedient to keep her occupied and close at hand? Mrs. Atterbury had shown her nothing but kindness, yet she was conscious of the woman's dominant character, and that beneath all her suavity lurked the pitiless tyranny of an inflexible will. She was beginning to feel the iron hand within the velvet glove, and she shuddered at the mere fancy that it might some time close about her.
It was significant that no thought of escape came to her. She had met the new danger as something which must be faced and lived down, and the natural alternative of notifying the authorities of the foul play to which she had been an unwitting accessory after the fact never entered her mind. Instead, with a singleness of purpose which seemed inexplicable she resolutely forced her thoughts into other channels than those which led to the appalling mystery, and strove to focus her attention on the books.
Through the long afternoon Betty plodded on at her tedious task, for it was dusk when Welch came to announce the seamstress' arrival. The silence in the house had remained unbroken, but as she left the library the girl became aware of distant and confused shouting in the street beyond the great gates. It sounded upon her ears like the clamor of an approaching mob, and her heart beat fast as she hurried upstairs.
"What can it be?" she voiced her query aloud as Mrs. Atterbury met her at the door of the sewing room. "Those cries upon the street! Did you hear them? Could there have been a—an accident?"
"It is just the news-sellers crying an 'extra'," the other responded, adding with an amused smile, "No wonder it startled you! I suppose they are unknown in your home town. They are an unmitigated nuisance, but the public feeds on cheap sensation—"
"There's been a murder!" the little dressmaker croaked suddenly from the corner where she had been waiting. "A gentleman was found stabbed—"
Mrs. Atterbury's lips tightened and she lifted an authoritative hand.
"If you please, Miss Pope!" Her voice was as cold as the ringing of steel on steel. "Horrors do not appeal to me, and I am averse to discussing them."
"I'm very sorry, I'm sure." Miss Pope fluttered in distress, her pallid face flushing darkly. "I didn't think when I spoke, but I saw it in big staring headlines in a man's paper on the car, and the words just popped out of my mouth. I wouldn't say anything to upset anybody for the world——"
"You haven't." Mrs. Atterbury stemmed the quick, nervous flow of speech, and her own voice had sunk to its normal unemotional level. "I do not believe in encouraging a tendency to morbidity, especially in the young. We all know, unfortunately, that crime exists, but we who do not come in contact with it should spare ourselves the revolting details. Now let us see how the gown will fit."
Tremblingly, the cowed little creature busied herself about the girl's slender figure. Betty stood like an automaton, turning obediently at a touch of the seamstress' hand, but oblivious to all that went on about her. Miss Pope's inadvertent words had seared themselves on her brain in letters of fire and for an instant everything grew black before her eyes. Then out of the whirling darkness had come a fleeting glimpse of Mrs. Atterbury's face and all doubt of her knowledge of the midnight tragedy was gone forever. Stunned by the confirmation of her own secret fears, Betty gave no heed to the seamstress, until Welch appeared to call his mistress to the telephone.
When they were alone, Miss Pope glanced up with a strange intensity in her lack-lustre eyes.
"You—stay?" The words were barely formed by the woman's shaking lips.
"I think so," Betty murmured in response. "If Mrs. Atterbury likes me."
"Oh, she'll like you, fast enough." Miss Pope looked fearfully behind her as if the shadow of her employer lingered in the doorway. "Before you know it you'll be caught, too, and you'll never be able to get free. Why didn't you go yesterday when I warned you?"
"What did you mean? Mrs. Atterbury is kind and I must earn my living. Why should I leave this place?"
"Because you are young, with all your life before you! I can't explain. I'm taking an awful chance now, but oh! believe me, miss, and go! You'd be better off homeless, in the streets, than here!"
"You must tell me more!" Betty urged. "What is wrong here? What harm can come to me? I cannot give up a good position without even knowing why!"
The seamstress' hands fluttered in a little hopeless gesture, and she laid one finger warningly on her lips. When she spoke, it was in an altered tone.
"Yes, Miss, as you say, a little more fullness here. Mrs. Atterbury will advise me about the draping."
Her ear had been quicker than the girl's, for even as she paused the rustle of a skirt came to them down the hall and the mistress of the house appeared in the doorway. She darted a keen glance from one to the other, but Betty met her eyes calmly, and the seamstress' face was averted.
The fitting concluded and Miss Pope dismissed, Mrs. Atterbury turned to the girl.
"A few friends are dining with me tonight and I do not want you to appear in that sombre black. I have had Caroline put one of my waists in your room which I think you can manage to wear. Come down to the drawing-room early, please."
Betty obeyed, but found that some of the guests had already arrived. Mme. Cimmino was curled up felinely in a corner of the great davenport, a cigarette between her fingers and a spot of red glowing in each sallow cheek. She was talking rapidly with shrugs and darting, nervous gestures, to a tall, white-haired, distinguished stranger who was introduced as Doctor Bayard.
Wolvert stood alone, with one arm resting on the mantel. He was gazing into the fire and his face in the flickering glare seemed aged and shrunken, the high cheek bones glazed like those of a skull and the pale eyes shadowed.
Mrs. Atterbury was conversing with two other men by the door and as Betty was presented she took furtive note of them. The first, Leonard Ide, was a mere youth with a receding chin and vacant, glassy eyes. His dinner coat was extreme to the point of foppishness, but its dashing lines could not conceal the narrow stooped shoulders and hollow chest beneath. The hand he extended was cold and clammy to the girl's touch, and his high, thin voice grated unpleasantly on her ear.
The other was in appearance almost humorously antithetical. Short and stocky, with a rotund paunch, and bushy, iron-gray hair, he stood with his plump legs set wide apart and his eyes twinkled benignly behind huge rimmed glasses as he bowed his salutations. His voice was deep and gutteral with a decided accent and his ruddy face glowed in the firelight. Betty did not catch his name, but the others called him "Professor."
The pale youth attempted to engage her in conversation with an air of bored patronage which would have amused her under other circumstances, but as she looked from face to face, one question rang insistently through her brain. Did they know? The old gentleman with the air of an aristocrat, the jovial Professor, the spineless youth—could they bear the burden of guilty knowledge in common with the rest?
There was an undercurrent of perfect understanding, a veiled intimacy about the scattered group, ill-assorted as it was, which suggested a closer bond than that of old acquaintanceship. Betty could not have defined the sensation which assailed her but she felt that her every move and intonation were being weighed in the balance, as one brought before a tribunal.
Wolvert had turned from the fire-place and was approaching her, when the door was once more flung open, and Welch announced:
"Mr. and Mrs. Dana."
There was nothing distinctive at first glance about the couple who entered. The man was smooth shaven and of middle-age, slightly florid, slightly bald with lines of fatigue or dissipation about his eyes. The woman, a trifle younger, carried herself with a certain indolent grace, but her complexion was a shade too brilliant, her hair meretriciously yellow, and her voluptuous figure in its shimmering gown resembled a gorgeous over-blown flower.
The others addressed them familiarly as "Mortie" and "Louise," but with their entrance Betty noted a perceptible change in the spirit of the assembled party. The talk became disjointed, but more general in tone, and the note of intimacy was lacking.
At dinner, Betty was seated between the fatuous young man and Mr. Dana, with Wolvert again facing her across the table, as on the evening of her arrival. The debonair, bantering manner was gone, and he sat in moody silence, the food untouched before him, but his wine glass emptied as quickly as Welch could replenish it. A dull red gathered beneath his cheek bones, and his eyes glowed fitfully as the dinner progressed.
Betty could feel his gaze fastened upon a point just back of her, and involuntarily she glanced over her shoulder. The table had been enlarged to accommodate the augmented circle, and she realized with a start that she was seated directly in front of the hearth, almost upon the very spot where the body of the dead man had lain.
Madame Cimmino leaned over swiftly with her hand on Wolvert's arm, and whispered a few words in his ear, then deliberately she reached across for his wine glass and placed it beside her own plate.
He straightened as if suddenly awakened and flashed a lightening glance around the table, and at that moment the nasal tones of Mrs. Dana were raised in lazy derision.
"Ghosts! They went out of fashion with moated granges and secret panels. Good Lord, who believes in 'em nowadays?"
The professor shook his shaggy gray head.
"There is much that not yet scientifically explained has been," he remarked argumentatively. "It is the talk of a child to say, 'This cannot be,' because we know it not. I, myself, haff seen——"
"My dear Professor!" Doctor Bayard lifted a slim, blue-veined hand in deprecation. "I suffer from insomnia. Do not present me, I beg of you, with a group of shades to evoke about my bed! If the ghosts of men live after them, it can be only in the thoughts of those who are left behind."
"Household pets, eh!" Wolvert's voice rang out in a strident laugh and he seized the wine glass from Madame Cimmino's detaining hand. "Let's drink to them! To the ghosts of yester-year! May their shadows never grow less!"
Watching, Betty saw his eyes stray past her once more, and the glass halted half-way to his lips. For an instant a sick horror stole over her and then she heard Mrs. Atterbury's calm, level tones.
"That is a toast for Hallowe'en, Jack, but not apropos now. Why drag in bogies when you can pledge other things more to your taste?"
"Beauty, my boy, and youth. That's the ticket, eh?" Mortie Dana looked up from the hothouse pear he was peeling with placid precision. "Me for the youth thing every time—until Louise tries to teach me the new dance steps. Then I pass."
Under cover of the titter which ran around the table, Mrs. Atterbury collected the eyes of her women guests, and they retired to the drawing-room for coffee. Betty hesitated in the doorway, declining Welch's proffered tray and her employer smiled tolerantly.
"You are tired? My dear, run along to bed, if you like. You have been indoors all day and busy, and I forgot that your head ached. If you cannot sleep, ring for Caroline, and she will give you a bromide."
Betty thankfully availed herself of the opportunity and made her escape, but sleep was furthest from her thoughts. The hideous mystery still hammered at the gates of her brain, and could not be dismissed, but she was grateful at least for solitude that she might relax from the strain of dissimulation.
She wrapped a loose robe about her, unbound her hair and extinguishing the light threw herself on thechaise longuebefore the hearth. A pale moon rode high in the sky, glinting on the frost-laden cedars beyond her window, and the smouldering coals in the grate cast a cheerful ruddy glow about her. In the tranquil reality, it seemed incredible that tragedy and crime could have lurked beneath that roof so short a time before. In a swift revulsion of feeling the girl wondered if the suspicion and watchfulness which she had read on every face save those of the Danas, could have been, after all, but the product of her imagination.
A sudden sharp scream, muffled but unmistakable, brought her to her feet with her heart beating wildly. How long she had lain there, in the lethargy of a complete reaction, she had no means of knowing. The cry was not repeated, but the silence seemed pregnable with unnameable horror, and unable to control herself, Betty stole to her door and opened it. Then she paused, rigid with surprise. A few paces away, the maid, Caroline, sat on guard.
"Did you want something, Miss?" The woman rose respectfully, but her eyes did not meet the girl's. "Mrs. Atterbury said you might need me."
Betty started indignantly to speak, but checked the words which had risen to her lips. After a pause, she said quietly:
"No, but I fancied someone called."
"Oh, that was just somebody laughing, Miss. They're playing cards, Welch tells me."
Betty bade the woman a brief goodnight and closing her door, locked it with an emphatic click. The cry still echoed in her ears. Muffled as it had been, she recognized the voice of Mrs. Dana, and knew that no mirth had sounded in its shrill crescendo, but stark terror. Was a fresh tragedy being enacted below?
One point, at least, was clear beyond further doubt; the espionage and surveillance had been no vain imagining. The woman outside her door was there as jailor, not servitor. She herself, was a virtual prisoner!