CHAPTER XVIIIMOTHER AND DAUGHTER
Sir Frank Tarletonhad not given me all his reasons for not taking me with him to Paris. One of them, as he told me afterwards, was that I had made an enemy of Sarah Neobard, or, to put it the other way, I had made her regard me as an enemy. My chief believed that my presence would prevent him from obtaining any information from her or her mother. They would think he had come on a hostile errand, and they would obstinately hold their tongues, for fear lest anything they said might be used by me against her.
Tarleton’s intention was to appear in the character of a friend of Sarah’s, who did not share my suspicions and only wanted to be able to clear her from them. He was quite frank with me about the way in which he had spoken of me in my absence, and about everything else in which I was interested.
He put up at his favourite hotel, the Saint Lazare, on his arrival, one that suited him because it was near the centre of everything without being overrun by English and Americans. He liked to be among French people when he was in France. After the “little breakfast,” that first delicious taste of French coffee and French bread which atones for the stuffiness of the French railway carriage, he madehis way round to the Rue Jerusalem, where he was received with high distinction by the head of the French police to whom his name and official standing were well known.
The Chief presented to him Brigadier Samson, the detective who had the two fugitives under supervision, and he undertook, at the doctor’s request, that a formidable-looking gendarme in the showy uniform of the French police should be stationed opposite the Hotel Saint Catherine, in full sight from the windows, till further notice.
Another small piece of business was transacted. Tarleton laid before the Chief the photograph he had obtained from Inspector Charles, and invited him to find out if it corresponded with anything in his register of finger-prints.
The hour now being reached at which the ladies might be expected to show themselves, the visitor next went on to their hotel in the Rue Tivoli. In the hall he found the English detective who had followed them from London, and who had taken a room on the same floor, in the unsuspicious character of a tourist who found himself in Paris for the first time and was unwilling to venture far from his hotel.
“The birds are in their cage, Sir Frank,” he reported as soon as he recognized the specialist. “I’ve been hanging about here since the early morning and I’ve arranged with the management that they shan’t be allowed to go out by any other way.”
Tarleton, in reply, explained why he had askedfor a gendarme to be posted across the way. “I don’t want them to know that you’re a police officer, of course; but I may want them to know that they are being watched by the police.”
He had hardly finished speaking when the representative of French law appeared on the scene, a truly imposing figure with a huge moustache, who began pacing the pavement opposite like a man who was not to be trifled with.
The consultant asked if Mrs. Weathered had taken a private sitting-room and finding that she had, sent up his card, on which he had scribbled the words “Official Confidential.” When he was handing it into the office, however, the detective followed him to make a correction.
“She’s not staying here under her own name. She has taken the name of Neobard.”
He had to wait some minutes for a response. When at length he was taken upstairs and shown into the room he found, as he had expected, Miss Neobard alone.
“My mother asks you to excuse her, Sir Frank. She is not yet well enough to see anyone on business. May I ask the meaning of those words on your card?”
Sarah spoke with the utmost coolness. If she was frightened she had evidently resolved to hide her fright under a mask of defiance. Tarleton’s manner was one of entire friendliness.
“They mean that although I have come to seeMrs. Weathered as a Government official, on official business, our interview will be strictly confidential. I shall not make use of any information she may give me, without her consent.”
The daughter looked at him doubtfully.
“Does that apply to me as well?”
Sir Frank purposely hesitated before answering.
“There is no reason why I shouldn’t have a confidential talk with you as well, if you desire it. But at present I have only asked to see Mrs. Weathered.”
The name seemed to irritate the girl.
“My mother has dropped the name of Weathered,” she said sharply. “In future she desires to be known as Mrs. Neobard.”
Tarleton was struck by her tone. It conveyed to him that the change of name had not been made with a view to concealment, but was due to some deeper cause.
Up to now Miss Neobard had made no reference to the whereabouts of the travellers having been so soon discovered. She now threw out the question scornfully.
“I suppose the police are on our track, as we came here without giving anyone our address. Is that confidential?”
“Certainly not.” The doctor was getting a little irritated by this time. “Your leaving London while the mystery of Dr. Weathered’s death was still unsolved was enough to provoke the suspicion of the police. They were bound to keep you in sight.”
Sarah couldn’t very well contradict this. She lifted her head more defiantly than ever.
“My mother can’t see you,” she repeated. “Anything you want to say to her can be said to me.”
Sir Frank admired her courage. He tried to soften her.
“My dear Miss Neobard, I wish you would let me speak to you as a friend. You can’t think I have come here as an enemy. If I had I should have brought Dr. Cassilis with me. Or rather I should have sent him instead of coming myself.”
This shot told as he had expected. It was evident that Sarah cherished a strong resentment against me. It was a new light to her that my chief might take a different view of the case. For the first time she looked at him as if she thought it possible that he might be sincere.
“Dr. Cassilis has practically accused me of murder,” she said.
“Dr. Cassilis is a young man without much experience. He has let himself become interested in the young lady you seemed to suspect. He spoke in her defence; I don’t believe that he really thinks you had anything to do with Dr. Weathered’s death. He went too far, of course, and I have told him so. In fact, I have now taken him off the case.”
The defiance began to die out of Miss Neobard’s eyes. They were fine eyes and she knew how to use them with effect.
“Does that mean that I am not under suspicion any longer?” she inquired in a more gracious voice.
“You never have been under suspicion as far as I am concerned,” the doctor answered a little evasively. “I feel sure you are a truthful woman, and whatever you choose to tell me in confidence I shall believe.”
Sarah was fairly conquered. Her voice broke down as she replied.
“I am a wicked girl, Sir Frank. I did have thoughts at one time that he ought to die. But I never went farther than that. I swear to you on my oath that I have no more idea how he was murdered, or who murdered him, than you have—I mean, I have no idea at all.”
The consultant thanked her with a grave bow. “The evidence I have obtained so far points to suicide,” he said quietly. “But I only tell you that in confidence, to relieve your mind. Dr. Weathered carried poison about with him.”
The step-daughter looked even more relieved than Tarleton had expected, but a good deal surprised as well.
“I knew that he took opium sometimes,” she whispered back, “but I never guessed that he meant to take his own life. I was afraid....” She stopped short and shuddered.
The specialist took no notice of the suppressed hint.
“You will see now, I hope, that I haven’t comehere to try and get your mother to tell me anything about you. As a matter of fact, my business with her has nothing to do with the murder, or whatever it was, except indirectly. I have come in the interest of some of Dr. Weathered’s patients and I think Mrs. Neobard may be able to help me to obtain certain information on their behalf. I am sure you won’t wish any evil he has done to go on after his death.”
This way of putting it appealed to what was best in Sarah Neobard. She looked puzzled but not disposed to resist. She made another half-hearted attempt to extract from the visitor what it was that he had to ask her mother, but when she found him firm in insisting that he must see Mrs. Neobard herself, she gave way, and went to fetch her.
A quarter of an hour, half an hour, passed. There must have been a severe struggle going on in the next room, although no sounds reached the consultant through the wall. He had laid his hand on the bell to summon a waiter and send a peremptory message when the door at last opened and the widow came in.
Tarleton felt convinced from the first moment that she had guessed his business with her. Her eyes were red and her naturally pale cheeks showed a feverish flush. She was hardly able to walk and her daughter supported her tenderly till she was in a chair. Sarah herself was clearly ignorant of the cause of her mother’s emotion. She glanced wonderinglyfrom her to Sir Frank and back again, and seemed to be holding herself in readiness to defend her parent or to back up Tarleton’s demand, according to her judgment of what was the right course.
The examiner came to the point quickly.
“Miss Neobard has explained to you that this is a confidential interview, I hope. Whatever you say to me will be a secret between ourselves, unless you authorize me to make use of it. It is for you to decide whether your daughter is to remain in the room, of course.”
The mother stretched out a hand and took hold of one of her protector’s, who answered for her. “I have promised my mother to remain.”
“Very good. I had better begin by reading you this advertisement. It appeared in the paper yesterday.”
He read out the invitation from Messrs. James, Halliday and James to the patients of the late Dr. Weathered to apply for the return of their correspondence and continued:
“The solicitor who put in this advertisement refused to give the name of the client who is instructing him. Will you tell me if it is you?”
Mrs. Neobard shook her head faintly without speaking.
“Can you tell me if your late husband left a will, and who is his executor?”
“I can answer that question,” Sarah put in. “My mother is sole executor and he has left everythingto her. She wanted to renounce execution; but the lawyer told her that it would be no use, as the law would make her administrator. She is not going to take a farthing of his money, if there is any.”
“Quite so; then Mrs. Neobard is the only person who is lawfully entitled to deal with any papers Dr. Weathered left behind him. Can you explain to me how these letters came to be in the possession of this solicitor, or the person for whom he is acting?”
The flush had faded from the widow’s cheeks, leaving her very pale.
“I can’t explain,” she said in a whisper.
“Does it matter?” her daughter asked. “As long as these people get their letters back again, what does it matter who they got them from?”
“They won’t get them; that is what matters,” the physician said gravely. “There is a criminal behind this advertisement. I must explain to you and to Mrs. Neobard, if she doesn’t know already, what these letters were about.”
Very deliberately and keeping his eyes fixed on the agitated woman all the time, Tarleton outlined the story of his discoveries. He was careful not to mention names. He explained why the doctor’s case-book had been taken from the safe, and why that precaution had proved useless. The dead man’s real hold over his victims had been through the letters he had persuaded them to write to him; those lettershad been signed with a cipher, and the object of the advertisement was to make the writers disclose their identity so that they might be blackmailed by the holder of their secret confessions.
The widow’s distress became pitiable as the explanation proceeded. There could be no doubt that she was no party to the plot and hardly a doubt that its revelation had come to her as a complete shock. As for Sarah Neobard, her fine eyes fairly blazed with indignation.
“I never knew that such things were possible,” she exclaimed. “I don’t believe—I can’t believe—that my step-father ever meant to use the letters in such a way.”
At this point the consultant saw Mrs. Neobard open her eyes and look at him wistfully, as if to ask him to take no notice of her daughter’s tenderness for the scoundrel who had passed to his account.
“Surely you can’t think,” the girl pursued, “that my mother knew anything about this? Mother!”—she turned to the shrinking woman—“do you hear? You must do everything you can to help Sir Frank Tarleton to stop this iniquity.”
Now Sir Frank knew perfectly well that it could be stopped pretty easily by the simple step of Mrs. Neobard’s solicitors taking proceedings in her name for the recovery of the letters. The legal property in them, of course was vested in the writers, but until they claimed them the executrix was entitled to their possession; and if the Chancery Lanesharper refused to give them up or to disclose their whereabouts he was pretty sure to be struck off the Rolls and stood a good chance of being indicted for conspiracy. All this the adviser of the Home Office had known from the first, but he took care to keep the knowledge up his sleeve. For him the question of the letters was a secondary one and he was only using it as a means of opening the widow’s lips.
Miss Neobard suddenly stopped pleading with her mother to say to the specialist, “I think I can guess who has those letters—Madame Bonnell!”
This was another thing about which Tarleton had entertained no doubt since seeing the advertisement. But he received the suggestion with every sign of disbelief.
“Madame Bonnell is the last person to whom I should think Dr. Weathered would have trusted them,” he answered.
“She may have stolen them,” the girl persisted. “Perhaps he kept them at the Club and she has found them since his death.”
“He kept nothing whatever at the Club except the disguise he wore at the Club dances. I have had the premises searched carefully by the police, and they have questioned the staff. The letters are not there now, and there is no receptacle in which they could have been stored.”
Mrs. Neobard had been listening anxiously to this discussion. Now she spoke.
“Who else do you think can have them?”
“That is what I want you to tell me. And I think you can.”
The widow shivered again. Her daughter looked at her with a dawning comprehension that something was wrong.
“Mother, you must tell if you know.”
“Your husband kept these letters in a concealed cupboard of his dressing-room,” Tarleton told her. “Your house has been searched for a secret hiding-place and the cupboard has been found.” It was a bold shot, but the widow’s face showed that it had hit the mark. “That cupboard is empty now. The law presumes that you opened it, as you were entitled and bound to do, after his death, and that you took possession of its contents as executrix. I am here to ask you in the name of the law what you have done with them.”
He watched Dr. Weathered’s relict very closely while he was speaking. She seemed to be wrenched by conflicting fears. At one moment her lips parted as if to speak, at the next they closed again more tightly than before.
“Tell him, mother!” pleaded the girl.
The mother turned to her despairingly.
“I can’t! I daren’t! Don’t ask me to,” she cried hopelessly.
The representative of the law looked at his watch.
“If that is your last answer you must be prepared to take the consequences, Mrs. Weathered.” He pointed dramatically to a window of the room.“Look out of that window, Miss Neobard, and tell your mother what you see.”
Sarah rushed to the window and gave a sharp cry. “Mother, there is a gendarme watching the hotel!” She looked reproachfully at the physician. “And you told me you came here as a friend!”
“I am trying to act as one. Your mother has only to tell me the truth and I will open the window and send that man away.”
“Do you hear, mother? You won’t let me be arrested?”
Mrs. Weathered—Tarleton had meant to remind her that she was passing under a name not legally hers—had merely shivered again when she heard who was outside. Now she sprang out of her chair, a different woman.
“You! Arrest you! What do you mean, Sarah? What have you to do with it? The police have come for me.”
Sarah was not less amazed and horrified than her mother.
“Nonsense; they can’t touch you,” she exclaimed. “You weren’t at the dance that night!”
“And you were? My girl, my poor girl, what have you been doing?”
“Sir Frank Tarleton knows. I have told him everything. I think he means to be friendly, but he can’t save me unless you speak out. She can speak safely, can’t she?” the daughter asked imploringly. “My mother isn’t in any danger?”
It was a question difficult to answer either way. Tarleton felt the eyes of both women searching his face, each with the same anxiety, though each on the other’s behalf.
“It is only right that I should let you know that Mrs. Weathered may be in danger. The letters which ought to be in her possession may contain the clue to your step-father’s murder.”
And now the scene became painful indeed to witness, as the mother and daughter stood facing each other with the questions in their eyes that they were too terrified to put. Both of them at some time had loved the murdered man; both of them, perhaps, had come to hate him. And now each had been shaken by a sudden revelation of the other’s hidden side. The mother had just caught an appalling glimpse into her daughter’s unknown relations with her step-father; the daughter had been staggered by the suggestion that her mother might have been his mortal enemy. And all the time, beneath these mutual dreads and suspicions it might be, these unconscious jealousies, there prevailed, stronger than any other feeling, that blind, unselfish love between mother and child which made both of them eager to thrust themselves into danger in the other’s place.
The parts had been reversed. It was Sarah who was now anxious to close her mother’s mouth and Mrs. Weathered who showed herself determined to speak. The skilful manipulator of human naturewho had wrought up this dramatic situation knew that he had only to wait for thedénouementat which he had aimed.
He had not to wait long.
“If you have trusted Sir Frank Tarleton I can do the same,” the elder woman said at last. “I have more to tell him than he knows. He thinks that I only found those letters in the cupboard after my husband’s death. I have been reading every one of them for more than a year.”
If the consultant had not quite expected to hear this he had been expecting something more than he thought it wise to indicate just then. He let no sign of his thoughts appear outwardly. The two women, exhausted by the tempest of emotion they had passed through, sat down side by side; but they kept their eyes averted from one another, and only raised them from time to time to watch the effect of Mrs. Weathered’s narrative on him.
“You mustn’t think that I am an inquisitive woman, Sir Frank. I didn’t discover my husband’s secrets by prying. I never knew the existence of the cupboard or the letters till one of the women who had been led into writing to him came to me.”
This was news to the doctor. He pricked up his ears for the name.
“She was a Miss Sebright—Miss Julia Sebright.”
“Ah! She is dead.” Tarleton thought it soundpolicy to show that he was able to check the statements made to him.
“Yes. She died soon afterwards, of a broken heart, I think. She came to me in despair and appealed to me as Dr. Weathered’s wife to protect her from him.”
Sir Frank got up, walked to the window, opened it and waved his hand. The gendarme outside saluted respectfully and marched away.