CHAPTER X.
Face to Face.
Betty attacked the new translation that evening with undiminished enthusiasm but her mind wandered and when midnight came a few meager lines proved to be the result of her labors. She paused to read them over before putting them away and the quaint phraseology fell strangely from her lips upon the stillness of the room.
"To the Stele of Abu I have come in peace to sepulchre this of eternity which I have made in the horizon western of the home of Abydos—"
Her voice halted and trembled into silence and she stood listening with every nerve strained. A dull jarring crash had sounded from below accompanied by the muffled but harsh tones of a man's voice raised in anger or expostulation.
Hastily disposing of her work she extinguished the light and groping her way to the door, opened it. The voice had sunk to an indistinguishable rumble, and mingled with it was a murmur in a higher, clearer tone which she had no difficulty in recognizing as that of Mrs. Atterbury.
The girl hesitated, then crept to the head of the stairs. The house was in darkness save for a narrow shaft of light which glowed from the open door of the music room. Clinging to the banisters and keeping well in shadow, Betty made her way down the staircase and from behind the shelter of the newel post she peered into the room.
Jack Wolvert was crouched half over the table, both fists full of crumpled papers and his dark face, half-defiant, half-cringing, leered up at his hostess who stood before him drawn up to her full height in imperious disdain.
"You're crazy!" he ejaculated. "What's the good of playing a waiting game? Come out in the open and make one big bluff, that's my idea."
"You'll find it decidedly dangerous, my man, to execute your ideas without my sanction." Mrs. Atterbury's quiet tones dominated his blustering whine. "Remember, I am master and I will not brook any rebellion against my authority. I might remind you that the last time you took matters into your own hands the result was unfortunate."
"Ah-h!" The sound which issued from his lips was between a snarl and a groan, and Betty saw his whole body quiver as he cowered back. Mrs. Atterbury advanced a step and her cameo-like face suddenly hardened.
"We're all in this for life or death. If one succeeds, all succeed; if one fails, he fails alone. That was my rule, but once I broke it for you. Hereafter you fare with the rest. You have your uses, I admit, but no one is indispensable to me. You know what happened to the Comet; remember her luck when you are tempted to play a lone hand, my friend."
Betty waited to hear no more, but turned and fled silently up the stair, her heart beating tumultuously. The level unemotional voice of Mrs. Atterbury had not raised in pitch or increased in volume, yet there had been something far more sinister in its measured utterance than any display of ungoverned wrath could have evidenced.
The girl sank trembling upon her couch and for the first time a vision came to her of her own possible fate should the extent of her knowledge be even suspected by the ruthless woman downstairs. She had learned from the cipher letter of the retribution which had overtaken "The Comet," and once again the stark face of Breckinridge rose before her, his sightless eyes fixed on hers in mute warning.
She covered her face with her hands, striving to shut out the dread picture imagination conjured for her. She, like the Comet, was playing a lone hand, but the stakes were worth the hazard! At that thought her momentary weakness dropped from her like a cloak and she straightened, her eyes aflame with resolution. She would win, she must!
Disrobing in the dark, she lay for long listening intently, but no sound reached her from below, and the strained effort brought its own reaction of fatigue. She slept at last, to awaken only when the sunlight of broad day streamed through the uncurtained window and flooded her face.
There was no hint of the previous night's quarrel in the genial camaraderie of Mrs. Atterbury's attitude toward Wolvert, but Betty fancied that Madame Cimmino regarded them both with ill-concealed anxiety and the girl was glad to escape to the seclusion of the library.
The morning's correspondence awaited her, and she opened the first letter in listless abstraction, her thoughts still centered on the implacable words she had overheard. One glance at the sheet of note-paper in her hand, however, and everything else was banished from her mind.
"My dear Marcia:"Professor Blythe has caught pneumonia in Chicago. Doctor's consultation held over him on Monday. Too old for recovery, Hamilton says is verdict. Much grieved but still hope. McCormick has been getting orders which evidence strong market. New machinery no trouble to operate. Marked Mary's improved letters; she has seized her opportunity. Hear from out west that John Cote won appeal. Sanitarium being planned for consumptives here. Good air but nothing can be doing if Mayor refuses permit. Please communicate in care Trust Company. Give nobody business confidence but me. They lie who say low prices ruin business. It is dead if the end of the superfluous stock is not sold out regardless of cost."With kindest regards,"Yours,"Shirley."
"My dear Marcia:
"Professor Blythe has caught pneumonia in Chicago. Doctor's consultation held over him on Monday. Too old for recovery, Hamilton says is verdict. Much grieved but still hope. McCormick has been getting orders which evidence strong market. New machinery no trouble to operate. Marked Mary's improved letters; she has seized her opportunity. Hear from out west that John Cote won appeal. Sanitarium being planned for consumptives here. Good air but nothing can be doing if Mayor refuses permit. Please communicate in care Trust Company. Give nobody business confidence but me. They lie who say low prices ruin business. It is dead if the end of the superfluous stock is not sold out regardless of cost.
"With kindest regards,
"Yours,"Shirley."
With a curious set smile Betty read and reread the missive, then laid it aside, and sat for some minutes staring out of the window. The hidden message was pregnant with meaning and a shade of anxiety crossed her face. The man whom she had seen loitering under the lamp-post just outside the gates a few days before loomed up as a possibility more to be dreaded than any present contingency within the house and she felt that she was being irresistibly carried forward in a chain of events forged by circumstance which she could not break if she would.
When Mrs. Atterbury came to her, Betty watched surreptitiously for her reception of the cipher letter and saw that after a quick glance her employer thrust it without a perusal into her belt. The girl marveled anew at her stoicism; she must at least have gleaned the purport of the first sentence, yet her eyes were as clear and her voice as steady as though it had been the most casual of communications.
Her dictation was interrupted by the abrupt entrance of Madame Cimmino.
"Look!" the latter exclaimed with an excited gesture toward the window. "It is Louise Dana, but in what haste! Without a hat, too, in this most detestable of climates! Is it that something has happened? An accident?"
She spoke lightly, but her eyes smouldered as they met Mrs. Atterbury's, and the rouge stood out in patches of vivid scarlet against the sudden pallor which blanched her cheeks.
Mrs. Dana was running swiftly up the path from the gate, her meretriciously golden head bare and gleaming in the sunlight. A cloak had been flung carelessly about her figure, but as she sped past the window Betty noted that her feet were encased in the thinnest of boudoir slippers.
With a murmured ejaculation Mrs. Atterbury hurried from the room followed by Madame Cimmino, and the girl was left to her own thoughts. A bell pealed wildly through the house and its echo had not died away when there came a slam of the front door and a piercing cry which reached even to the secluded library, although Betty could only distinguish a word or two.
"Mortie—caught—help—!"
"Good God!" It was unmistakably Wolvert's voice but shaken with the same craven fear which had actuated it on the day of Betty's arrival. "What do you mean by coming here? Do you want to give us all—"
"Silence!" Mrs. Atterbury dominated him and after a confused murmur from which not a separate word could be gleaned another door closed and the hysterical sobs of Louise Dana were hushed.
What had happened to bring that woman in terror to the house? For it was mortal terror which had distorted her face as she passed the window and had rung in her desperate cry. She had come for help, but what help could she find there? Betty remembered her single meeting with the florid middle-aged man whose eyes were lined with weariness and dissipation. What had he "caught," or was it that he himself had been caught in some difficulty?
For half an hour Betty restlessly paced the library, fearing to venture forth lest she be suspected of eavesdropping yet longing to escape to her own room. The hum of a motor drew her to the window, and she reached it in time to see the familiar bizarre stripes of Mrs. Atterbury's own car whirl past and down the drive, with a fleeting glimpse of a golden head within it. Whatever her trouble, the woman had not remained to add its shadow to those already clustering about the household.
It was with somewhat of a shock that Betty turned to find her employer standing on the threshold.
"Yes, she has gone." Mrs. Atterbury nodded, following the girl's glance. "Such a ridiculously nervous, excitable, young woman! Just fancy, my dear! Mr. Dana—you met him at my last dinner, if you remember—has been ailing for some days, and this morning the physician was called and found that he was suffering an acute attack of diphtheria. It is very sad, of course, although I do not doubt that he will pull through, but that silly wife of his rushed out of the house just as she was with only a cloak over her negligee, jumped into a taxi and came straight to me. Unfortunately, the car broke down a short distance beyond our gates and what the neighbors will think of her running about bareheaded I cannot imagine!"
"I am sorry about Mr. Dana," Betty remarked in a lowered tone. "Diphtheria is very dangerous, isn't it?"
"Not since medicine has become the science that it is today," responded the other, indifferently. "Mr. Wolvert was quite annoyed. Did you hear him? He is an arrant coward about contagion, like most men, and he feared she would give the disease to all of us! It really was stupid of her, but they are strangers here, you know, and I am practically the only friend she has. I arranged by 'phone for Mr. Dana's reception in a private hospital and she has gone back to him with her nerves steadied. What empty-headed fools most modern women are!"
Her tone was a skillful blend of indignation and amusement but she bent her eyes upon the girl in a keen, unwavering scrutiny as if to satisfy herself that the explanation was received in good faith.
Betty smiled back at her steadily.
"People are apt to lose their heads when someone they love is in trouble, don't you think?" she asked.
"Some people, not those with any self-control. I don't believe that you would, for instance, my dear. I think that you could be counted upon to act in any emergency which presented itself with quick decision and courage if you were sufficiently interested."
Betty flushed but she replied without a tremor.
"Perhaps I should. I hope so. We never can tell until the moment comes."
Luncheon was a constrained meal. Madame Cimmino maintained a non-committal silence and her nervous fluttering hands were still, but Wolvert's mood had changed to a mocking frivolity which Betty had learned to recognize as the reaction of his lawless nature from any emotional stress. Divining the girl's aversion, he directed his witticisms at her, and sought in impish perversity to compel her response. Madame Cimmino listened and watched with sombre eyes and Mrs. Atterbury flashed an ominous warning to him as they rose.
For the better part of the afternoon her employer kept Betty beside her, busied with the mending of household linen, while from the music room came strange intermittent bursts of melody, rippling, elusive, hauntingly sweet. Long moments of silence would ensue and then a thunderous crash of chords as if in very fury the musician sought to smother the softer, tenderer strain.
Betty was fascinated in spite of herself. It was as though the man's inmost soul were revealed racked with the storm of his passions yet alluring in its reckless gay abandon. A dangerous man to himself as well as to others she felt, and to her own heart there came again that thrill of fear.
When she descended the stairs at dusk, she found Wolvert standing before the great hearth in the hall staring moodily into the flames. She would have passed him with a mere nod, but he stepped forward impulsively.
"Where have you been hiding yourself since lunch? I looked for you in every corner, but you had vanished."
"For me?" Betty paused in unguarded surprise.
"For you, mademoiselle!" he mimicked her slyly. "Why will you not be kind and talk to me? I know that you disapprove of me most heartily, but you have promised to be friendly and I am bored with my own exclusive society. Come and sit here and tell me what goes on behind those grave, wise, young eyes of yours."
He pushed a chair forward coaxingly but she shook her head.
"I—I have a message for Welch—" she began.
"A plague take Welch!" Wolvert interrupted. "In all this great house, where no one ever does anything and nothing ever happens, must you alone be always busy, you who alone are worth talking to? You could tell me much, if you would."
There was a note of studied intent in his tone which held her as much as the choice of phrase piqued her curiosity.
"What do you mean, Mr. Wolvert? What could I tell you?"
He shrugged, laughing lightly.
"Why you are always so still, for one thing, like a little mouse. Your silence intrigues me. Why your glance is always so distrait as if you were listening to a far-off voice." He knelt upon the chair his arms folded across its back and brought his dark face close to hers. "Perhaps you will tell me also why your smile is so sad and so bitter. What has life taught you, Little Mouse?"
"To keep my own counsel, Mr. Wolvert." Betty retreated a step or two, but her eyes met his gravely. "To walk warily, and to do my appointed work."
"That is a wise creed." He seemed to muse aloud. "But is this your appointed work? To write at another's dictation, to fetch and carry, to serve and wait and to be finally dismissed! You are so demure, so docile, so perfectly in the picture, that I sometimes wonder if you are not playing a part."
He paused and she waited breathlessly seeking to read in his sardonic smile how much of serious purpose lay behind the facetious drawl.
"Your work is still new to you, but are you content?" He rose and strode around the chair to face her. His manner had changed and the words fell in a rapid, insistent undertone from his lips. "Will you be satisfied always to stay in the background, to occupy the extra chair, to be commanded when you might command? You have too much intelligence to be without ambition, too much common sense to work for a mere pittance when you might share, too much personality to remain a nonentity. You are quick-witted and discreet, you would go far if you were shown the way, and I——"
"Jack!" Madame Cimmino's querulous voice sounded from the stairs, and Betty shrank guiltily. Wolvert straightened and uttered an oath beneath his breath, but the next instant the little mocking smile was curling about his lips.
"Ah, Speranza! Now that I have ceased torturing the piano, you come forth from your refuge! I have been trying to beguile Miss Shaw from her duty and succeeded only in boring her. Come down and tell me how you liked my concerto; you must have heard it for I thundered it to the gods."
"Miss Shaw does not look bored." Madame Cimmino flashed a look of unconcealed hostility at the girl, her usually dull eyes snapping fire. "Marcia has sent me for you. She is in her private sitting-room."
"At your service, Madame." He shrugged, glanced at Betty from beneath lowered lids and bounded lightly up the stair. Midway he passed the woman and she caught his arm, murmuring something in a staccato patter of Italian. He shook himself free and laughing vanished around the gallery overhead.
"Will you be satisfied always to be commanded when you might command?" His words still rang in Betty's ears and his dark face, sinister and insurgent rose before her mental vision. Had he not spoken as much to himself as to her? He, too, appeared to be at Mrs. Atterbury's command and the girl recalled his half-cringing defiance in that secret quarrel of the previous evening. Was he contemplating revolt?
All at once she was aware that Madame Cimmino stood staring with insolent hauteur into her face.
"I must find Welch; I have a message for him." She stammered and was turning away when the other woman detained her with a gesture.
"Surely a further delay will make but little difference, Miss Shaw." Her tones were silky. "There is something I wish to say to you and you would do well to listen to me. You are clever even for an American young girl, but you rely too much upon your ability to take care of yourself. For your own good I speak; do not try to play with Jack Wolvert."
"I don't understand you, Madame," Betty said coldly. "What have I to do with any guest of Mrs. Atterbury?"
"What indeed?" The woman came close and thrust her sallow pointed chin forward. "Do you think I have no eyes, that I have not seen your sly crude efforts to engage his attention?Mille tonneres!You are but a conceited, over confident child! Your very gaucherie may amuse him for the moment but you could not hold him a day. Do I not know him? Have I not studied his every mood these many years? Could you think in the insolence of your youth to take him from me?"
"You are mistaken, Madame." The girl spoke in quiet control, but she met the snakelike glitter in the other's eyes with an answering gleam. "I have no interest whatever in Mr. Wolvert and his inclinations and prejudices are alike of no moment to me. In any case I am accountable to my employer alone for my conduct and I have received no complaint from Mrs. Atterbury. Let me pass, please."
"Then I warn you!" Madame Cimmino turned livid. "You are treading on dangerous ground, more dangerous than you know. Keep your silly schoolgirl wiles for others, but leave Jack Wolvert to me or I will make you wish that the earth had opened and engulfed you before you crossed my path!"
Betty smiled.
"Your threats do not interest me, Madame Cimmino. I shall accept censure only from Mrs. Atterbury, and I beg that you will go to her. I really cannot listen any longer to these unfounded accusations."
She turned and left the other inarticulate with rage. Her own heart was filled with a dull ache of resentment, not against the hysterical virago and her absurd charge, but against the perverse fate which through no act or fault of hers, seemed rearing difficulty after difficulty in the way of her purpose. She did not underestimate the intelligence of Wolvert or the danger of arousing his suspicions, while she realized that the jealous animosity of Madame Cimmino might at any moment precipitate a crisis. She must walk warily, indeed.
Her message delivered to Welch, she ascended the back stairs to avoid a second encounter with the woman who had become her enemy, and was rounding the gallery shadowed in the gathering dusk, when a blotch of white lying against the baseboard caught her eye.
It was a folded paper, crumpled in the center and even before she opened it, a premonition warned her of its contents. The cipher letter! The significant words leaped out at her anew from the irrelevancies with which they were cloaked and on a swift impulse she thrust the letter into her breast.
Late that night when all was still Betty crept from her room and down the stairs like an unquiet wraith intent upon the secret motive which actuated her, yet on her guard for the slightest warning of discovery.
The darting ray from her electric torch played before her, dancing in a diminutive circle of light upon the wall and piercing the almost opaque darkness like a flash of forked lightning. The midnight silence was oppressive in its intensity and for the first time there seemed to be a brooding menace in the soundless void.
The girl's nerves were tingling and the torch wavered fitfully in her hand. A hallucination, vague but terrible, took possession of her that something unnameable lurked in the shadows watching, crouched to spring. In vain she summoned her resolute will to her aid, lashing herself with scorn for her weakness. A swift unreasoning fear clutched her by the throat and her trembling limbs all but refused her support.
Doggedly she forced herself to go on but the distance from stair foot to library door seemed interminable and when she had traversed it Betty paused, an unexplainable reluctance staying her hand upon the knob.
At length she set her teeth and with an impatient jerk opened the door. Her torch light circled about the familiar room, the desk with its orderly array of papers, the center table, the bookcases—
Her breath caught in a strangling gasp. One bookcase was swinging loosely on its secret hinge and the safe in the aperture behind was open, a handful of documents scattered upon the floor.
Slowly her light travelled along the wall creeping ever nearer and nearer to the hearth. The brass andirons glittered dazzlingly from the darkness and the outline of a massive chair leaped into prominence. Something lay relaxed upon its arm, and the wavering light stopped.
It was a black coatsleeve, motionless but seemingly vibrant with life and from it protruded a pallid hand shapely and slender, its tapering fingers loosely extended.
There was a roaring as of many waters in Betty's ears and her heart seemed to have ceased to beat, but mechanically she trained the light upward. Jack Wolvert's face, diabolic in triumph, leered at her.