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Title: The melody of death
Author: Edgar Wallace
Release date: March 24, 2025 [eBook #75702]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Lincoln Mac Veagh, 1927
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MELODY OF DEATH ***
THE MELODY OF
DEATH
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
_Author of
“Angel Esquire,” “The Four Just Men,” “The
Green Archer,” etc., etc._
LINCOLN MAC VEAGH
THE DIAL PRESS
NEW YORK - MCMXXVII
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE AMATEUR SAFE SMASHER
CHAPTER II. SUNSTAR’S DERBY
CHAPTER III. GILBERT LEAVES HURRIEDLY
CHAPTER IV. THE “MELODY IN F”
CHAPTER V. THE MAN WHO DESIRED WEALTH
CHAPTER VI. THE SAFE AGENCY
CHAPTER VII. THE BANK SMASHER
CHAPTER VIII. THE WIFE WHO DID NOT LOVE
CHAPTER IX. EDITH MEETS THE PLAYER
CHAPTER X. THE NECKLACE
CHAPTER XI. THE FOURTH MAN
CHAPTER XII. THE PLACE WHERE THE LOOT WAS STORED
CHAPTER XIII. THE MAKER OF WILLS
CHAPTER XIV. THE STANDERTON DIAMONDS
CHAPTER XV. THE TALE THE DOCTOR TOLD
CHAPTER XVI. BRADSHAW
The Melody of Death
CHAPTER I.
THE AMATEUR SAFE SMASHER
On the night of May 27th, 1925, the office of Gilderheim, Pascoe and
Company, diamond merchants, of Little Hatton Garden, presented no
unusual appearance to the patrolling constable who examined the lock
and tried the door in the ordinary course of his duty. Until nine
o’clock in the evening the office had been occupied by Mr. Gilderheim
and his head clerk, and a plain clothes officer, whose duty it was to
inquire into unusual happenings had deemed that the light in the
window on the first floor fell within his scope, and had gone up to
discover the reason for its appearance. The 27th was a Saturday, and
it is usual for the offices in Hatton Garden to be clear of clerks and
their principals by three at the latest.
Mr. Gilderheim, a pleasant gentleman, had been relieved to discover
that the knock which brought him to the door, gripping a revolver in
his pocket in case of accidents, produced no more startling adventure
than a chat with a police officer who was known to him. He explained
that he had to-day received a parcel of diamonds from an Amsterdam
house, and was classifying the stones before leaving for the night,
and with a few jocular remarks on the temptation which sixty thousand
pounds’ worth of diamonds offered to the unscrupulous “night of
darkness,” the officer left.
At nine-forty Mr. Gilderheim locked up the jewels in his big safe,
before which an electric light burnt day and night, and accompanied by
his clerk, left No. 93 Little Hatton Garden and walked in the
direction of Holborn.
The constable on point duty bade them good-night, and the plain
clothes officer, who was then at the Holborn end of the thoroughfare,
exchanged a word or two.
“You will be on duty all night?” asked Mr. Gilderheim as his clerk
hailed a cab.
“Yes, sir,” said the officer.
“Good!” said the merchant. “I’d like you to keep a special eye upon my
place. I am rather nervous about leaving so large a sum in the safe.”
The officer smiled.
“I don’t think you need worry, sir,” he said, and after the cab
containing Mr. Gilderheim had driven off he walked back to No. 93.
But in that brief space of time between the diamond merchant leaving
and the return of the detective many things had happened. Scarcely had
Gilderheim reached the detective than two men walked briskly along the
thoroughfare from the other end. Without hesitation the first turned
into No. 93, opened the door with a key, and passed in. The second man
followed. There was no hesitation, nothing furtive in their movements.
They might have been lifelong tenants of the house, so confident were
they in every action.
Not half a minute after the second man had entered a third came from
the same direction, turned into the building, unlocked the door with
that calm confidence which had distinguished the action of the first
comer, and went in.
Three minutes later two of the three were upstairs.
With extraordinary expedition one had produced two small iron bottles
from his pockets and had deftly fixed the rubber tubes and adjusted
the little blow-pipe of his lamp, and the second had spread out on the
floor a small kit of tools of delicate temper and beautiful finish.
Neither man spoke. They lay flat on the ground, making no attempt to
extinguish the light which shone before the safe. They worked in
silence for some little while, then the stouter of the two remarked,
looking up at the reflector fixed at an angle to the ceiling and
affording a view of the upper part of the safe to the passer-by in the
street below--
“Even the mirrors do not give us away, I suppose?”
The second burglar was a slight, young-looking man with a shock of
hair that suggested the musician.
He shook his head.
“Unless all the rules of optics have been specially reversed for the
occasion,” he said with just a trace of a foreign accent, “we cannot
possibly be seen.”
“I am relieved,” said the first.
He half whistled, half hummed a little tune to himself as he plied the
hissing flame to the steel door.
He was carefully burning out the lock, and had no doubt in his mind
that he would succeed, for the safe was an old-fashioned one.
No further word was exchanged for half an hour. The man with the
blow-pipe continued in his work, the other watching with silent
interest, ready to play his part when the operation was sufficiently
advanced.
At the end of half an hour the elder of the two wiped his streaming
forehead with the back of his hand, for the heat which the flame gave
back from the steel door was fairly trying.
“Why did you make such a row closing the door?” he asked. “You are not
usually so careless, Calli.”
The other looked down at him in mild astonishment.
“I made no noise whatever, my dear George,” he said. “If you had been
standing in the passage you could not have heard it; in fact, I closed
the door as noiselessly as I opened it.”
The perspiring man on the ground smiled.
“That would be fairly noiseless,” he said.
“Why?” asked the other.
“Because I did not close it. You walked in after me.”
Something in the silence which greeted his words made him look up.
There was a puzzled look upon his companion’s face.
“I opened the door with my own key,” said the younger man slowly.
“You opened----” The man called George frowned. “I do not understand
you, Callidino. I left the door open, and you walked in after me; I
went straight up the stairs, and you followed.”
Callidino looked at the other and shook his head.
“I opened the door myself with the key,” he said quietly. “If anybody
came in after you--why, it is up to us, George, to see who it is.”
“You mean----?”
“I mean,” said the little Italian, “that it would be extremely awkward
if there is a third gentleman present on this inconvenient occasion.”
“It would, indeed,” said the other.
“Why?”
Both men turned with a start, for the voice that asked the question
without any trace of emotion was the voice of a third man, and he
stood in the doorway screened from all possibility of observation from
the window by the angle of the room.
He was dressed in an evening suit, and he carried a light overcoat
across his arm.
What manner of man he was, and how he looked, they had no means of
judging, for from his chin to his forehead his face was covered by a
black mask.
“Please do not move,” he said, “and do not regard the revolver I am
holding in the light of a menace. I merely carry it for self-defence,
and you will admit that under the circumstances, and knowing the
extreme delicacy of my position, I am fairly well justified in taking
this precaution.”
George Wallis laughed a little under his breath.
“Sir,” he said, without shifting his position, “you may be a man after
my own heart, but I shall know better when you have told me exactly
what you want.”
“I want to learn,” said the stranger.
He stood there regarding the pair with obvious interest. The eyes
which shone through the holes of the mask were alive and keen.
“Go on with your work, please,” he said. “I should hate to interrupt
you.”
George Wallis picked up the blow-pipe and addressed himself again to
the safe door. He was a most adaptable man, and the situation in which
he found himself nonplussed had yet to occur.
“Since,” he said, “it makes absolutely no difference as to whether I
leave off or whether I go on, if you are a representative of law and
order, I may as well go on, because if you are not a representative of
those two admirable, excellent and necessary qualities I might at
least save half the swag with you.”
“You may save the lot,” said the man sharply. “I do not wish to share
the proceeds of your robbery, but I want to know how you do it--that
is all.”
“You shall learn,” said George Wallis, that most notorious of
burglars, “and at the hands of an expert, I beg you to believe.”
“That I know,” said the other calmly.
Wallis went on with his task apparently undisturbed by this
extraordinary interruption. The little Italian’s hands had twitched
nervously, and here might have been trouble, but the strength of the
other man, who was evidently the leader of the two, and his
self-possession had heartened his companion to accept whatever
consequences the presence of this man might threaten. It was the
masked stranger who broke the silence.
“Isn’t it an extraordinary thing,” he said, “that whilst technical
schools exist for teaching every kind of trade, art and craft, there
is none which engage in teaching the art of destruction. Believe me, I
am very grateful that I have had this opportunity of sitting at the
feet of a master.”
His voice was not unpleasant, but there was a certain hardness which
was not in harmony with the flippant tone he adopted.
The man on the floor went on with his work for a little while, then he
said without turning his head--
“I am anxious to know exactly how you got in.”
“I followed close behind you,” said the masked man. “I knew there
would be a reasonable interval between the two of you. You see,” he
went on, “you have been watching this office for the greater part of a
week; one of you has been on duty practically every night. You rented
a small office higher up this street which offered a view of these
premises. I gathered that you had chosen to-night because you brought
your gas with you this morning. You were waiting in the dark hall-way
of the building in which your office is situated, one of you watching
for the light to go out and Mr. Gilderheim depart. When he had gone,
you, sir”--he addressed the man on the floor--“came out immediately,
your companion did not follow so soon. Moreover, he stopped to pick up
a small bundle of letters which had apparently been dropped by some
careless person, and since these letters included two sealed packets
such as the merchants of Hatton Garden send to their clients, I was
able to escape the observation of the second man and keep reasonably
close to you.”
Callidino laughed softly.
“That is true,” he said, with a nod to the man on the floor. “It was
very clever. I suppose you dropped the packet?”
The masked man inclined his head.
“Please go on,” he said, “do not let me interrupt you.”
“What is going to happen when I have finished?” asked George, still
keeping his face to the safe.
“As far as I am concerned, nothing. Just as soon as you have got
through your work, and have extracted whatever booty there is to be
extracted, I shall retire.”
“You want your share, I suppose?”
“Not at all,” said the other calmly. “I do not want my share by any
means. I am not entitled to it. My position in society prevents me
from going farther down the slippery path than to connive at your
larceny.”
“Felony,” corrected the man on the floor.
“Felony,” agreed the other.
He waited until without a sound the heavy door of the safe swung open
and George had put his hand inside to extract the contents, and then,
without a word, he passed through the door, closing it behind him.
The two men sat up tensely and listened. They heard nothing more until
the soft thud of the outer door told them that their remarkable
visitor had departed.
They exchanged glances--interest on the one face, amusement on the
other.
“That is a remarkable man,” said Callidino.
The other nodded.
“Most remarkable,” he said, “and more remarkable will it be if we get
out of Hatton Garden to-night with the loot.”
It would seem that the “more than most” remarkable happening of all
actually occurred, for none saw the jewel thieves go, and the smashing
of Gilderheim’s jewel safe provided an excellent alternative topic for
conversation to the prospect of Sunstar for the Derby.
CHAPTER II.
SUNSTAR’S DERBY
There it was again!
Above the babel of sound, the low roar of voices, soft and sorrowful,
now heard, now lost, a vagrant thread of gold caught in the drab woof
of shoddy life gleaming and vanishing.… Gilbert Standerton sat tensely
straining to locate the sound.
It was the “Melody in F” that the unseen musician played.
“There’s going to be a storm.”
Gilbert did not hear the voice. He sat on the box-seat of the coach,
clasping his knees, the perspiration streaming from his face.
There was something tragic, something a little terrifying in his pose.
The profile turned to his exasperated friend was a perfect
one--forehead high and well-shaped, the nose a little long, perhaps,
the chin strong and resolute.
Leslie Frankfort, looking up at the unconscious dreamer, was reminded
of the Dante of convention, though Dante never wore a top-hat or found
a Derby Day crowd so entirely absorbing.
“There’s going to be a storm.”
Leslie climbed up the short step-ladder, and swung himself into the
seat by Gilbert’s side.
The other awoke from his reverie with a start.
“Is there?” he asked, and wiped his forehead.
Yet as he looked around it was not the murky clouds banking up over
Banstead that held his eye; it was this packed mass of men and women,
these gay placards extolling loudly the honesty and the establishment
of “the old firm,” the booths on the hill, the long succession of
canvas screens which had been erected to advertise somebody’s whisky,
the flimsy-looking stands on the far side of the course, the bustle,
the pandemonium and the vitality of that vast, uncountable throng made
such things as June thunderstorms of little importance.
“If you only knew how the low brows are pitying you,” said Leslie
Frankfort, with good-natured annoyance, “you would not be posing for a
picture of ‘The Ruined Gambler.’ My dear chap, you look for all the
world, sitting up here with your long, ugly mug adroop, like a model
for the coloured plate to be issued with the Christmas Number of the
_Anti-Gambling Gazette_. I suppose they have a gazette.”
Gilbert laughed a little.
“These people interest me,” he said, rousing himself to speak. “Don’t
you realise what they all mean? Every one of them with a separate and
distinct individuality, every one with a hope or a fear hugged tight
in his bosom, every one with the capacity for love, or hate, or
sorrow. Look at that man!” he said, and pointed with his long, nervous
finger.
The man he indicated stood in a little oasis of green. Hereabouts the
people on the course had so directed their movements as to leave an
open space, and in the centre stood a man of medium height, a black
bowler on the back of his head, a long, thin cigar between his white,
even teeth. He was too far away for Leslie to distinguish these
particulars, but Gilbert Standerton’s imagination filled in the
deficiencies of vision, for he had seen this man before.
As if conscious of the scrutiny, the man turned and came slowly
towards the rails where the coach stood. He took the cigar from his
mouth and smiled as he recognised the occupant of the box-seat.
“How do you do, sir?”
His voice sounded shrill and faint, as if an immeasurable distance
separated them, but he was evidently shouting to raise his voice above
the growling voices of the crowd. Gilbert waved his hand with a smile,
and the man turned with a raise of his hat, and was swallowed up in a
detachment of the crowd which came eddying about him.
“A thief,” said Gilbert, “on a fairly large scale--his name is Wallis;
there are many Wallises here. A crowd is a terrible spectacle to the
man who thinks,” he said half to himself.
The other glanced at him keenly.
“They’re terrible things to get through in a thunderstorm,” he said,
practically. “I vote we go along and claim the car.”
Gilbert nodded.
He rose stiffly, like a man with cramp, and stepped slowly down the
little ladder to the ground. They passed through the barrier and
crossed the course, penetrated the little unsaddling enclosure,
through the long passages where press-men, jockeys and stewards
jostled one another every moment of race days, to the roadway without.
In the roped garage they found their car, and, more remarkable, their
chauffeur.
The first flicker of blue lightning had stabbed twice to the Downs,
and the heralding crash of thunder had reverberated through the
charged air, when the car began to thread the traffic toward London.
The storm, which had been brewing all the afternoon, broke with
terrific fury over Epsom. The lightning was incessant, the rain
streamed down in an almost solid wall of water, crash after crash of
thunder deafened them.
The great throng upon the hill was dissolving as though it was
something soluble; its edges frayed into long black streamers of
hurrying people moving toward the three railway stations. It required
more than ordinary agility to extricate the car from the chaos of
charabancs and motor-cabs in which it found itself.
Standerton had taken his seat by the driver’s side, though the car was
a closed one. He was a man quick to observe, and on the second flash
he had seen the chauffeur’s face grow white and his lips twitching. A
darkness almost as of night covered the heavens. The horizon about was
rimmed with a dull, angry orange haze; so terrifying a storm had not
been witnessed in England for many years.
The rain was coming down in sheets, but the young man by the
chauffeur’s side paid no heed. He was watching the nervous hands of
the man twist this way and that as the car made detour after detour to
avoid the congested road.
Suddenly a jagged streak of light flicked before the car, and
Standerton was deafened by an explosion more terrifying than any of
the previous peals.
The chauffeur instinctively shrank back, his face white and drawn; his
trembling hands left the wheel, and his foot released the pedal. The
car would have come to a standstill, but for the fact that they were
at the top of a declivity.
“My God!” he whimpered, “it’s awful. I can’t go on, sir.”
Gilbert Standerton’s hand was on the wheel, his neatly-booted foot had
closed on the brake pedal.
“Get out of it!” he muttered. “Get over here, quick!”
The man obeyed. He moved shivering to his master’s place, his hands
before his face, and Standerton slipped into the driver’s seat and
threw in the clutch.
It was fortunate that he was a driver of extraordinary ability, but he
needed every scrap of knowledge as he put the car to the slope which
led to the lumpy Downs. As they jolted forward the downpour increased,
the ground was running with water as though it had been recently
flooded. The wheels of the car slipped and skidded over the greasy
surface, but the man at the steering-wheel kept his head, and by and
by he brought the big car slithering down a little slope on to the
main way again. The road was sprinkled with hurrying, tramping people.
He moved forward slowly, his horn sounding all the time, and then of a
sudden the car stopped with a jerk.
“What is it?”
Leslie Frankfort had opened the window which separated the driver’s
seat from the occupants of the car.
“There’s an old chap there,” said Gilbert, speaking over his shoulder,
“would you mind taking him into the car? I’ll tell you why after.”
He pointed to two woe-begone figures that stood on the side of the
road. They were of an old man and a girl; Leslie could not see their
faces distinctly. They stood with their backs to the storm, one thin
coat spread about them both.
Gilbert shouted something, and at his voice the old man turned. He had
a beautiful face, thin, refined, intellectual; it was the face of an
artist. His grey hair straggled over his collar, and under the cloak
he clutched something, the care of which seemed to concern him more
than his protection from the merciless downpour.
The girl at his side might have been seventeen, a solemn child, with
great fearless eyes that surveyed the occupants of the car gravely.
The old man hesitated at Gilbert’s invitation, but as he beckoned
impatiently he brought the girl down to the road and Leslie opened the
door.
“Jump in quickly,” he said. “My word, you’re wet!”
He slammed the door behind them, and they seated themselves facing
him.
They were in a pitiable condition; the girl’s dress was soaked, her
face was wet as though she had come straight from a bath.
“Take that cloak off,” said Leslie brusquely. “I’ve a couple of dry
handkerchiefs, though I’m afraid you’ll want a bath towel.”
She smiled.
“It’s very kind of you,” she said. “We shall ruin your car.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Leslie cheerfully. “It’s not my car.
Anyway,” he added, “when Mr. Standerton comes in he will make it much
worse.”
He was wondering in his mind by what freakish inclination Standerton
had called these two people to the refuge of his Limousine.
The old man smiled as he spoke, and his first words were an
explanation.
“Mr. Standerton has always been very good to me,” he said gently,
almost humbly.
He had a soft, well-modulated voice. Leslie Frankfort recognised that
it was the voice of an educated man. He smiled. He was too used to
meeting Standerton’s friends to be surprised at this storm-soddened
street musician, for such he judged him to be by the neck of the
violin which protruded from the soaked coat.
“You know him, do you?”
The old man nodded.
“I know him very well,” he said.
He took from under his coat the thing he had been carrying, and Leslie
Frankfort saw that it was an old violin. The old man examined it
anxiously, then with a sigh of relief he laid it across his knees.
“It’s not damaged, I hope?” asked Leslie.
“No, sir,” said the other; “I was greatly afraid that it was going to
be an unfortunate ending to what has been a prosperous day.”
They had been playing on the Downs, and had reaped a profitable
harvest.
“My grand-daughter also plays,” said the old man. “We do not as a rule
care for these great crowds, but it invariably means money”--he
smiled--“and we are not in a position to reject any opportunity which
offers.”
They were now drawing clear of the storm. They had passed through
Sutton, and had reached a place where the roads were as yet dry, when
Gilbert stopped the car and handed the wheel to the shame-faced
chauffeur.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” the man began.
“Oh, don’t bother,” smiled his employer, “one is never to be blamed
for funking a storm. I used to be as bad until I got over it… there
are worse things,” he added, half to himself.
The man thanked him with a muttered word, and Gilbert opened the door
of the car and entered. He nodded to the old man and gave a quick
smile to the girl.
“I thought I recognised you,” he said. “This is Mr. Springs,” he said,
turning to Leslie. “He’s quite an old friend of mine. I’m sure when
you have dined at St. John’s Wood you must have heard Springs’ violin
under the dining-room window. It used to be a standing order, didn’t
it, Mr. Springs?” he said. “By the way,” he asked suddenly, “were you
playing----”
He stopped, and the old man, misunderstanding the purport of the
question, nodded.
“After all,” said Gilbert, with a sudden change of manner, “it
wouldn’t be humane to leave my private band to drown on Epsom Downs,
to say nothing of the chance of his being struck by lightning.”
“Was there any danger?” asked Leslie in surprise.
Gilbert nodded.
“I saw one poor chap struck as I cleared the Downs,” he said; “there
were a lot of people near him, so I didn’t trouble to stop. It was a
terrifying experience.”
He looked back out of the little oval window behind.
“We shall have it again in London to-night,” he said, “but storms do
not feel so dangerous in town as they do in the country. They’re not
so alarming. Housetops are very merciful to the nervous.”
They took farewell of the old man and his grand-daughter at Balham,
and then, as the car continued, Leslie turned with a puzzled look to
his companion.
“You’re a wonderful man, Gilbert,” he said; “I can’t understand you.
You described yourself only this morning as being a nervous wreck----”
“Did I say that?” asked the other dryly.
“Well, you didn’t admit it,” said Leslie, with an aggrieved air, “but
it was a description which most obviously fitted you. And yet in the
face of this storm, which I confess curled me up pretty considerably,
you take the seat of your chauffeur and you push the car through it.
Moreover, you are sufficiently collected to pick up an old man, when
you had every excuse to leave him to his dismal fate.”
For a moment Gilbert made no reply; then he laughed a little bitterly.
“There are a dozen ways of being nervous,” he said, “and that doesn’t
happen to be one of mine. The old man is an important factor in my
life, though he does not know it--the very instrument of fate.”
He dropped his voice almost solemnly. Then he seemed to remember that
the curious gaze of the other was upon him.
“I don’t know where you got the impression that I was a nervous
wreck,” he said briefly. “It’s hardly the ideal condition for a man
who is to be married this week.”
“That may be the cause, my dear chap,” said the other reflectively. “I
know a lot of people who are monstrously upset at the prospect. There
was Tuppy Jones who absolutely ran away--lost his memory, or some such
newspaper trick.”
Gilbert smiled.
“I did the next worst thing to running away,” he said a little
moodily. “I wanted the wedding postponed.”
“But why?” demanded the other. “I was going to ask you that this
morning coming down, only it slipped my memory. Mrs. Cathcart told me
she wouldn’t hear of it.”
Gilbert gave him no encouragement to continue the subject, but the
voluble young man went on--
“Take what the gods give you, my son,” he said. “Here you are with a
Foreign Office appointment, an Under-Secretaryship looming in the near
future, a most charming and beautiful bride in prospect, rich----”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” said Gilbert sharply. “The idea is
abroad all over London. Beyond my pay I have no money whatever. This
car,” he said, as he saw the other’s questioning face, “is certainly
mine--at least, it was a present from my uncle, and I don’t suppose
he’ll want it returned before I sell it. Thank God it makes no
difference to you,” he went on with that note of hardness still in his
voice, “but I am half inclined to think that two-thirds of the
friendships I have, and all the kindness which is from time to time
shown to me, is based upon that delusion of riches. People think that
I am my uncle’s heir.”
“But aren’t you?” gasped the other.
Gilbert shook his head.
“My uncle has recently expressed his intention of leaving the whole of
his fortune to that admirable institution which is rendering such
excellent service to the canine world--the Battersea Dogs’ Home.”
Leslie Frankfort’s jovial face bore an expression of tragic
bewilderment.
“Have you told Mrs. Cathcart this?” he asked.
“Mrs. Cathcart!” replied the other in surprise. “No, I haven’t told
her. I don’t think it’s necessary. After all,” he said with a smile,
“Edith isn’t marrying me for money, she is pretty rich herself, isn’t
she? Not that it matters,” he said hastily, “whether she’s rich or
whether she’s poor.”
Neither of the two men spoke again for the rest of the journey, and at
the corner of St. James’s Street Gilbert put his friend down.
He continued his way to the little house which he had taken furnished
a year before, when marriage had only seemed the remotest of
possibilities, when his worldly prospects had seemed much brighter
than they were at present.
Gilbert Standerton was a member of one of those peculiar families
which seem to be made up entirely of nephews. His uncle, the eccentric
old Anglo-Indian, had charged himself with the boy’s future, and he
had been mainly responsible for securing the post which Gilbert now
held. More than this, he had made him his heir, and since he was a man
who did nothing in secret, and was rather inclined to garrulity, the
news of Gilbert’s good fortune was spread from one end of England to
the other.
Then, a month before this story opens, had come like a bombshell a
curt notification from his relative that he had deemed it advisable to
alter the terms of his will, and that Gilbert might look for no more
than the thousand pounds to which, in common with innumerable other
nephews, he was entitled.
It was not a shock to Gilbert except that he was a little grieved with
the fear that in some manner he had offended his fiery uncle. He had a
too lively appreciation of the old man’s goodness to him to resent the
eccentricity which would make him a comparatively poor man.
It would have considerably altered the course of his life if he had
notified at least one person of the change in his prospects.
CHAPTER III.
GILBERT LEAVES HURRIEDLY
Gilbert was dressing for dinner when the storm came up over London.
It had lost none of its intensity or strength. For an hour the street
had glared fitfully in the blue lightning of the electrical
discharges, and the house rocked with crash after crash of thunder.
He himself was in tune with the element, for there raged in his heart
such a storm as shook the very foundations of his life. Outwardly
there was no sign of distress. The face he saw in the shaving-glass
was a mask, immobile and expressionless.
He sent his man to call a taxi-cab. The storm had passed over London,
and only the low grumble of thunder could be heard when he came out on
to the rain-washed streets. A few wind-torn wisps of cloud were
hurrying at a great rate across the sky, stragglers endeavouring in
frantic haste to catch up the main body.
He descended from his cab at the door of No. 274 Portland Square
slowly and reluctantly. He had an unpleasant task to perform, as
unpleasant to him, more unpleasant, indeed, than it could be to his
future mother-in-law.
He did not doubt that the suspicion implanted in his mind by Leslie
was unfair and unworthy.
He was ushered into the drawing-room, and found himself the solitary
occupant. He looked at his watch.
“Am I very early, Cole?” he asked the butler.
“You are rather, sir,” said the man, “but I will tell Miss Cathcart
you are here.”
Gilbert nodded. He strolled across to the window, and stood, his hands
clasped behind him, looking out upon the wet street. He stood thus for
five minutes, his head sunk forward on his breast, absorbed in
thought. The opening of the door aroused him, and he turned to meet
the girl who had entered.
Edith Cathcart was one of the most beautiful women in London, though
“woman” might be too serious a word to apply to this slender girl who
had barely emerged from her school-days.
In some grey eyes of a peculiar softness a furtive apprehension always
seems to wait--a fear and an appeal at one and the same time. So it
was with Edith Cathcart. Those eyes of hers were for ever on guard,
and even as they attracted they held the overeager seeker of
friendship at arm’s length. The nose was just a little _retroussè_;
the sensitive lips played supporter to the apprehensive eyes. She wore
her hair low over her forehead; it was dark almost to a point of
blackness. She was dressed in a plain gown of sea-green satin, with
scarcely any jewel or ornamentation.
He walked to meet her with quick steps and took both her hands in his;
his hungry eyes searched her face eagerly.
“You look lovely to-night, Edith,” he said, in a voice scarcely above
a whisper.
She released her hands gently with the ghost of a smile that subtly
atoned for her action.
“Did you enjoy your Derby Day?” she asked.
“It was enormously interesting,” he said; “it is extraordinary that I
have never been before.”
“You could not have chosen a worse day. Did you get caught in the
storm? We have had a terrible one here.”
She spoke quickly, with a little note of query at the end of each
sentence. She gave you the impression that she desired to stand well
with her lover, that she was in some awe of him. She was like a child,
anxious to acquit herself well of a lesson; and now and then she
conveyed a sense of relief, as one who had surmounted yet another
obstacle.
Gilbert was always conscious of the strain which marked their
relationship. A dozen times a day he told himself that it was
incredible that such a strain should exist. But he found a ready
excuse for her diffidence and the furtive fear which came and went in
her eyes like shadows over the sea. She was young, much younger than
her years. This beautiful bud had not opened yet, and his engagement
had been cursed by over-much formality.
He had met her conventionally at a ball. He had been introduced by her
mother, again conventionally, he had danced with her and sat out with
her, punted her on the river, motored her and her mother to Ascot. It
was all very ordinary and commonplace. It lacked something. Gilbert
never had any doubt as to that.
He took the blame upon himself for all deficiencies, though he was
something of a romancist, despite the chilly formalism of the
engagement. She had kept him in his place with the rest of the world,
one arm’s length, with those beseeching eyes of hers. He was at arm’s
length when he proposed, in a speech the fluency of which was eloquent
of the absence of anything which touched emotionalism. And she had
accepted in a murmured word, and turned a cold cheek for his kiss, and
then had fluttered out of his arms like an imprisoned bird seeking its
liberty, and had escaped from that conventional conservatory with its
horrible palms and its spurious Tanagra statuettes.
Gilbert in love was something of a boy; an idealist, a dreamer. Other
grown men have shared his weakness, there are unsuspected wells of
romance in the most practical of men. So he was content with his
dreams, weaving this and that story of sweet surrender in his inmost
heart. He loved her, completely, absorbingly. To him she was a divine
and a fragrant thing.
He had taken her hand again in his, and realised with pain, which was
tinctured with amusement that made it bearable, that she was seeking
to disengage herself, when Mrs. Cathcart came into the room.
She was a tall woman, still beautiful, though age had given her a
certain angularity. The ravages of time had made it necessary for her
to seek artificial aid for the strengthening of her attractions. Her
mouth was thin and straight and uncompromising, her chin too bony to
be beautiful. She smiled as she rustled across the room and offered
her gloved hand to the young man.
“You’re early, Gilbert,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied awkwardly. Here was the opportunity which he sought,
yet he experienced some reluctance in availing himself of the chance.
He had released the girl as the door opened, and she had instinctively
taken a step backward, and stood with her hands behind her, regarding
him gravely and intently.
“Really,” he said, “I wanted to see you.”
“To see me?” asked Mrs. Cathcart archly. “No, surely not me!”
Her smile comprehended the girl and the young man. For some reason
which he could not appreciate at the moment Gilbert felt
uncomfortable.
“Yes, it was to see you,” he said, “but it isn’t remarkable at this
particular period of time.”
He smiled again.
She held up a warning finger.
“You must not bother about any of the arrangements. I want you to
leave that entirely to me. You will find you have no cause to
complain.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that,” he said hastily, “it was something more--more--”
He hesitated. He wanted to convey to her the gravity of the business
he had in hand. And even as he approached the question of an
interview, a dim realisation came to him of the difficulty of his
position. How could he suggest to this woman, who had been all
kindness and all sweetness to him, that he suspected her of motives
which did credit neither to her head nor her heart? How could he
broach the subject of his poverty to one who had not once but a
hundred times confided to him that his expectations and the question
of his future wealth were the only drawbacks to what she had described
as an ideal love marriage?
“I almost wish you were poor, Gilbert,” she had said. “I think riches
are an awful handicap to young people circumstanced as you and Edith
will be.”
She had conveyed this suspicion of his wealth more than once. And yet,
at a chance word from Leslie, he had doubted the purity of her
motives! He remembered with a growing irritation that it had been Mrs.
Cathcart who had made the marriage possible; the vulgar-minded might
even have gone further, and suggested that she had thrown Edith at his
head. There was plenty of groundwork for Leslie’s suspicion, he
thought, as he looked at the tall, stylish woman before him. Only he
felt ashamed that he had listened to the insidious suggestion.
“Could you give me a quarter of an hour----” He stopped. He was going
to say “before dinner,” but thought that possibly an interview after
the meal would be less liable to interruption.
“--after dinner?”
“With pleasure,” she smiled. “What are you going to do? Confess some
of the irregularities of your youth?”
He shook his head with a little grimace.
“You may be sure I shall never tell you those,” he said.
“Then I will see you after dinner,” she assented. “There are a lot of
people coming to-night, and I am simply up to my eyes in work. You
bridegrooms,” she patted his shoulder with her fan reproachfully,
“have no idea what chaos you bring into the domestic life of your
unfortunate relatives of the future.”
Edith stood aloof, in the attitude she had adopted when he had
released her, watchful, curious, in the scene, but not of it. It was
an effect which the presence of Mrs. Cathcart invariably produced upon
her daughter. It was not an obliteration, not exactly an eclipse, as
the puzzled Gilbert had often observed. It was as though the entrance
of one character of a drama were followed by the immediate exit of her
who had previously occupied the scene. He pictured Edith waiting at
the wings for a cue which would bring her into active existence again,
and that cue was invariably the retirement of her mother.
“There are quite a number of nice people coming to-night, Gilbert,”
said Mrs. Cathcart, glancing at a slip of paper in her hand. “There
are some you don’t know, and some I want you very much to meet. I am
sure you will like dear Dr. Cassylis----”
A smothered exclamation caught her ear, and she looked up sharply.
Gilbert’s face was set: it was void of all expression. The girl saw
the mask and wondered.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Cathcart.
“Nothing,” said Gilbert steadily, “you were talking about your
guests.”
“I was saying that you must meet Dr. Barclay-Seymour--he is a most
charming man. I don’t think you know him?”
Gilbert shook his head.
“Well, you ought to,” she said. “He’s a dear friend of mine, and why
on earth he practises in Leeds instead of maintaining an establishment
in Harley Street I haven’t the slightest idea. The ways of men are
beyond finding out. Then there is.…”
She reeled off a list of names, some of which Gilbert knew.
“What is the time?” she asked suddenly. Gilbert looked at his watch.
“A quarter to eight? I must go,” she said. “I will see you immediately
after dinner.”
She turned back as she reached the door irresolutely.
“I suppose you aren’t going to change that absurd plan of yours,” she
asked hopefully.
Gilbert had recovered his equanimity.
“I do not know to which absurd plan you are referring,” he said.
“Spending your honeymoon in town,” she replied.
“I don’t think Gilbert should be bothered about that.”
It was the girl who spoke, her first intrusion into the conversation.
Her mother glanced at her sharply.
“In this case, my dear,” she said freezingly, “it is a matter in which
I am more concerned than yourself.”
Gilbert hastened to relieve the girl of the brunt of the storm. Mrs.
Cathcart was not slow to anger, and although Gilbert himself had never
felt the lash of her bitter tongue, he had a shrewd suspicion that his
future wife had been a victim more than once.
“It is absolutely necessary that I should be in town on the days I
referred to,” he said. “I have asked you----”
“To postpone the wedding?” said Mrs. Cathcart. “My dear boy, I
couldn’t do that. It wasn’t a reasonable request, now was it?”
She smiled at him as sweetly as her inward annoyance allowed her.
“I suppose it wasn’t,” he said dubiously.
He said no more, but waited until the door had closed behind her, then
he turned quickly to the girl.
“Edith,” he said, speaking rapidly, “I want you to do something for
me.”
“You want me to do something?” she asked in surprise.
“Yes, dearest. I must go away now. I want you to find some excuse to
make to your mother. I’ve remembered a most important matter which I
have not seen to----”
He spoke hesitatingly, for he was no ready liar.
“Going away!”
It was surprise rather than disappointment, he noticed, and was
pardonably irritated.
“You can’t go now,” she said, and that look of fear came into her
eyes. “Mother would be so angry. The people are arriving.”
From where he stood he had seen three motor broughams draw up almost
simultaneously in front of the house.
“I must go,” he said desperately. “Can’t you get me out in any way? I
don’t want to meet these people, I’ve very good reasons.”
She hesitated a moment.
“Where are your hat and coat?” she asked.
“In the hall--you will just have time,” he said.
She was in the hall and back again with his coat, led him to the
farther end of the drawing-room, through a door which communicated
with the small library beyond. There was a way here to the garage and
to the mews at the back of the house.
She watched the tall, striding figure with a troubled gaze, then as he
disappeared from view she fastened the library door and came back to
the drawing-room in time to meet her mother.
“Where is Gilbert?” asked Mrs. Cathcart.
“Gone,” said the girl.
“Gone!”
Edith nodded slowly.
“He remembered something very important and had to go back to his
house.”
“But of course he is returning?”
“I don’t think so, mother,” she said quietly. “I fancy that the
‘something’ is immensely pressing.”
“But this is nonsense!” Mrs. Cathcart stamped her foot. “Here are all
the people whom I have specially invited to meet him. It’s
disgraceful!”
“But, mother----”
“Don’t ‘but mother’ me, for God’s sake!” said Mrs. Cathcart.
They were alone, the guests were assembling in the larger
drawing-room, and there was no need for the elder woman to disguise
her feelings.
“You sent him away, I suppose?” she said. “I don’t blame him. How can
you expect to keep a man at your side if you treat him as though he
were a grocer calling for orders?”
The girl listened wearily, and did not raise her eyes from the carpet.
“I do my best,” she said in a low voice.
“Your worst must be pretty bad if that is your best. After I’ve
strained my every effort to bring to you one of the richest young men
in London, you might at least pretend that his presence is welcome;
but if he were the devil himself you couldn’t show greater reluctance
at meeting him or greater relief at his departure.”
“Mother!” said the girl, and her eyes were filled with tears.
“Don’t ‘mother’ me, please!” said Mrs. Cathcart deliberately. “I am
sick to death of your faddiness and your prejudices. What on earth do
you want? What am I to get you?”
She threw out her arms in exasperated despair.
“I don’t want to marry at all,” said the girl in a low voice. “My
father would never have forced me to marry.”
It was a daring thing to say, an exhibition of greater boldness than
she had ever shown before in her encounters with her mother. But
lately there had come to her a new courage. That despair which had
made her dumb glowed now to rage, the fires of rebellion smouldered in
her heart; and, albeit the demonstrations of her growing resentment
were few and far between, her courage grew upon her venturing.
“Your father!” breathed Mrs. Cathcart, white with rage, “am I to have
your father thrown at my head? Your father was a fool! A fool!” She
almost hissed the word. “He ruined me as he ruined you because he
hadn’t sufficient sense to keep the money he had inherited. I thought
he was a clever man. I looked up to him for twenty years as the
embodiment of all that was wise and kind and genial, and all those
twenty years he was frittering away his competence on every
hair-brained scheme which the needy adventurers of finance brought to
him. He would not have forced you! I swear he wouldn’t!” She laughed
bitterly. “He would have married you to the chauffeur if your heart
was that way inclined. He was all amiability and incompetence, all
good-nature and inefficiency. I hate your father!”
Her blue eyes were opened to their widest extent and the cold glare of
hate was indeed apparent to the shrinking girl. “I hate him every time
I have to entertain a shady stockbroker for the advantage I may
receive from his knowledge of the market; I hate him for every economy
I have to practise; I hate him every time I see my meagre dividends
come in and as I watch them swallowed up by the results of his folly.
Don’t make me hate you,” she said, pointing a warning finger at the
girl.
Edith had cowered before the torrent of words, but this slander of her
dead father roused something within her, put aside all fear of
consequence, even though that consequence might be a further
demonstration of that anger which she so dreaded.
Now she stood erect, facing the woman she called mother, her face
pale, but her chin tilted a little defiantly.
“You may say what you like about me, mother,” she said quietly, “but I
will not have you defame my father. I have done all you requested: I
am going to marry a man who, though I know he is a kindly and charming
man, is no more to me than the first individual I might meet in the
street to-night. I am making this sacrifice for your sake: do not ask
me to forego my faith in the man who is the one lovable memory in my
life.”
Her voice broke a little, her eyes were bright with tears.
Whatever Mrs. Cathcart might have said, and there were many things she
could have said, was checked by the entry of a servant.
For a moment or two they stood facing one another, mother and
daughter, in silence. Then without another word Mrs. Cathcart turned
on her heel and walked out of the room.
The girl waited for a moment, then went back to the library through
which Gilbert had passed. She closed the door behind her and turned on
one of the lights, for it was growing dark. She was shaking from head
to foot with the play of these pent emotions of hers. She could have
wept, but with anger and shame. For the first time in her life her
mother had shown her heart. The concentrated bitterness of years had
poured forth, unchecked by pity or policy. She had revealed the hate
which for all these years had been gnawing at her soul; revealed in a
flash the relationship between her father and her mother which the
girl had never suspected.
That they had not been on the most affectionate terms Edith knew, but
her short association with the world in which they moved had
reconciled her mind to the coolness which characterised the attitudes
of husband and wife. She had seen a score of such houses where man and
wife were on little more than friendly terms, and had accepted such
conditions as normal. It aroused in her a wild irritation that such
relationships should exist: child as she was, she had felt that
something was missing. But it had also reconciled her to her marriage
with Gilbert Standerton. Her life with him would be no worse, and
probably might be a little better, than the married lives of those
people with whom she was brought into daily contact.
But in her mother’s vehemence she caught a glimpse of the missing
quality of marriage. She knew now why her gentle father had changed
suddenly from a genial, kindly man, with his quick laugh and his too
willing ear for the plausible, into a silent shadow of a man, the sad,
broken figure she so vividly retained in her memory.
Here was a quick turn in the road of life for her an unexpected vista
flashing into view suddenly before her eyes. It calmed her, steadied
her. In those few minutes of reflection, standing there in the
commonplace, gloomy little library, watching through the latticed
panes the dismal mews which offered itself for inspection through a
parallelogram of bricked courtyard, she experienced one of those great
and subtle changes which come to humanity.
There was a new outlook, a new standard by which to measure her
fellows, a new philosophy evolved in the space of a second. It was a
tremendous upheaval of settled conviction which this tiny apartment
witnessed.
She was surprised herself at the calmness with which she returned to
the drawing-room and joined the party now beginning to assemble. It
came as a shock to discover that she was examining her mother with the
calm, impartial scrutiny of one who was not in any way associated with
her. Mrs. Cathcart observed the girl’s self-possession and felt a
twinge of uneasiness.
She addressed her unexpectedly, hoping to surprise her to
embarrassment, and was a little staggered by the readiness with which
the girl met her gaze and the coolness with which she disagreed to
some proposition which the elder woman had made.
It was a new experience to the masterful Mrs. Cathcart. The girl might
be sulking, but this was a new variety of sulks, foreign to Mrs.
Cathcart’s experience.
She might be angry, yet there was no sign of anger; hurt--she should
have been in tears. Mrs. Cathcart’s experienced eye could detect no
sign of weeping. She was puzzled, a little alarmed. She had gone too
far, she thought, and must conciliate, rather than carry on the feud
until the other sued for forgiveness.
It irritated her to find herself in this position, but she was a
tactician first and foremost, and it would be bad tactics on her part
to pursue a disadvantage. Rather she sought the _status quo ante
bellum_, and was annoyed to discover that it had gone for ever.
She hoped the talk that evening would confuse the girl to the point of
seeking her protection; but to her astonishment Edith spoke of her
marriage as she had never spoken of it before, without embarrassment,
without hesitation, coolly, reasonably, intelligently.
The end of the evening found Edith commanding her field and her mother
in the position of a suitor.
Mrs. Cathcart waited till the last guest had gone, then she came into
the smaller drawing-room to find Edith standing in the fireplace,
looking thoughtfully at a paper which lay upon the mantleshelf.
“What is it interests you so much, dear?”
The girl looked round, picked up the paper and folded it slowly.
“Nothing particularly,” she said. “Your Dr. Cassylis is an amusing
man.”
“He is a very clever man,” said her mother tartly.
She had infinite faith in doctors, and offered them the tribute which
is usually reserved for the supernatural.
“Is he?” said the girl coolly. “I suppose he is. Why does he live in
Leeds?”
“Really, Edith, you are coming out of your shell,” said her mother
with a forced smile of admiration. “I have never known you take so
much interest in the people of the world before.”
“I am going to take a great deal of interest in people,” said the girl
steadily. “I have been missing so much all my life.”
“I think you are being a little horrid,” said her mother, repressing
her anger with an effort; “you’re certainly being very unkind. I
suppose all this nonsense has arisen out of my mistaken confidence.”
The girl made no reply.
“I think I’ll go to bed, mother,” she said.
“And whilst you’re engaged in settling your estimate of people,” said
Mrs. Cathcart with ominous calm, “perhaps you will interpret your
fiancé’s behaviour to me. Dr. Cassylis particularly wanted to meet
him.”
“I am not going to interpret anything,” said the girl.
“Don’t employ that tone with me,” replied her mother sharply.
The girl stopped, she was half-way to the door. She hardly turned, but
spoke to her mother over her shoulder.
“Mother,” she said, quietly but decidedly, “I want you to understand
this: if there is any more bother, or if I am again made the victim of
your crossness, I shall write to Gilbert and break off my engagement.”
“Are you mad?” gasped the woman.
Edith shook her head.
“No, I am tired,” she said, “tired of many things.”
There was much that Mrs. Cathcart could have said, but with a belated
wisdom she held her tongue till the door had closed behind her
daughter. Then, late as the hour was, she sent for the cook and
settled herself grimly for a pleasing half hour, for the _vol-au-vent_
had been atrocious.
CHAPTER IV.
THE “MELODY IN F”
Gilbert Standerton was dressing slowly before his glass when Leslie
was announced. That individual was radiant and beautiful to behold as
became the best man at the wedding of an old friend.
Leslie Frankfort was one of those fortunate individuals who combine
congenial work with the enjoyment of a private income. He was the
junior partner of a firm of big stockbrokers in the City, a firm which
dealt only with the gilt-edged markets of finance. He enjoyed in
common with Gilbert a taste for classical music, and this was the bond
which had first drawn the two men together.
He came into the room, deposited his silk hat carefully upon a chair,
and sat on the edge of the bed, offering critical suggestions to the
prospective bridegroom.
“By the way,” he said suddenly, “I saw that old man of yours
yesterday.”
Gilbert looked round.
“You mean Springs, the musician?”
The other nodded.
“He was playing for the amusement of a theatre queue--a fine old
chap.”
“Very,” said Gilbert absently.
He paused in his dressing, took up a letter from the table, and handed
it to the other.
“Am I to read it?” asked Leslie.
Gilbert nodded.
“There’s nothing to read, as a matter of fact,” he said; “it’s my
uncle’s wedding present.”
The young man opened the envelope and extracted the pink slip. He
looked at the amount and whistled.
“One hundred pounds,” he said. “Good Lord! that won’t pay the up-keep
of your car for a quarter. I suppose you told Mrs. Cathcart?”
Gilbert shook his head.
“No,” he said shortly, “I intended telling her but I haven’t. I am
perfectly satisfied in my own mind, Leslie, that we are doing her an
injustice. She has been so emphatic about money. And after all, I’m
not a pauper,” he said with a smile.
“You’re worse than a pauper,” said Leslie earnestly; “a man with six
hundred a year is the worst kind of pauper I know.”
“Why?”
“You’ll never bring your tastes below a couple of thousand, you’ll
never raise your income above six hundred--plus your Foreign Office
job, that’s only another six hundred.”
“Work,” said the other.
“Work!” said the other scornfully, “you don’t earn money by work. You
earn money by scheming, by getting the better of the other fellow.
You’re too soft-hearted to make money, my son.”
“You seem to make money,” said Gilbert with a little smile.
Leslie shook his head vigorously.
“I’ve never made a penny in my life,” he confessed with some
enjoyment. “No, I have got some very stout, unimaginative senior
partners who do all the money-making. I merely take dividends at
various periods of the year. But then I was in luck. What is your
money, by the way?”
Gilbert was in the act of tying his cravat. He looked up with a little
frown.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, is it in securities--does it continue after your death?”
The little frown still knit the brows of the other.
“No,” he said shortly, “after my death there is scarcely enough to
bring in a hundred and fifty a year. I am only enjoying a life
interest on this particular property.”
Leslie whistled.
“Well, I hope, old son, that you’re well insured.”
The other man made no attempt to interrupt as Leslie, arguing with
great fluency and skill on the duties and responsibilities of heads of
families, delivered himself of his views on insurance and upon the
uninsured.
“Some Johnnies are so improvident,” he said. “I knew a man----”
He stopped suddenly. He had caught a reflection of Gilbert’s face in
the glass. It was haggard and drawn, it seemed the face of a man in
mortal agony. Leslie sprang up.
“What on earth is the matter, my dear chap?” he cried. He came to the
other’s side and laid his hand on his shoulder.
“Oh, it’s nothing--nothing, Leslie,” said Gilbert.
He passed his hand before his eyes as though to wipe away some ugly
vision.
“I’m afraid I’ve been rather a careless devil. You see, I depended too
much upon uncle’s money. I ought to be insured.”
“That isn’t worrying you surely?” asked the other in astonishment.
“It worries me a bit,” said Gilbert moodily. “One never knows, you
know----”
He stood looking thoughtfully at the other, his hands thrust into his
pockets.
“I wish to heaven this wedding had been postponed!”
Leslie laughed.
“It’s about time you were married,” he said. “What a jumpy ass you
are.”
He looked at his watch.
“You’d better hurry up, or you’ll be losing this bride of yours. After
all, this isn’t a day for gloom, it’s the day of days, my friend.”
He saw the soft look that came into Gilbert’s eyes, and felt satisfied
with his work.
“Yes, there is that,” said Gilbert Standerton softly. “I forgot all my
blessings. God bless her!” he said under his breath.
As they were leaving the house, Gilbert asked--
“I suppose you have a list of the guests who are to be present?”
“Yes,” said the other, “Mrs. Cathcart was most duteous.”
“Will Dr. Barclay-Seymour be there?” asked the other carelessly.
“Barclay-Seymour--no, he won’t be there,” replied Leslie, “he’s the
Leeds Johnnie, isn’t he? He went up from London last night. What’s
this talk of your having run away the other night?”
“It was an important engagement,” said Gilbert hurriedly, “I had a man
to see; I couldn’t very well put him off----”
Leslie realised that he had asked an embarrassing question and changed
the subject.
“By the way,” he said, “I shouldn’t mention this matter of the money
to Mrs. Cathcart till after you’ve both settled down.”
“I won’t,” said Gilbert grimly.
On the way to the church he reviewed all the troubles that were
besetting him and faced them squarely. Perhaps it would not be as bad
as he thought. He was ever prone to take an exaggerated and a worrying
view of troubles. He had anticipated dangers, and time and time again
his fears had been groundless. He had lived too long alone. A man
ought to be married before he was thirty-two. That was his age. He had
become cranky. He found consolation in uncomplimentary analysis till
the church was reached.
It was a dream, that ceremony: the crowded pews, the organ, the
white-robed choir, the rector and his assistants; the coming of Edith,
so beautiful, so ethereal in her bridal robes; the responses, the
kneeling and the rising--it was all unreal.
He had thought that the music would have made a lasting impression on
him; he had been at some pains to choose it, and had had several
consultations with the organist. But at the end of the service when he
began to walk, still in his dream, towards the vestry, he could not
recall one single bar. He had a dim recollection of the fact that
above the altar was a stained glass window, one tiny pane of which had
been removed, evidently on account of a breakage.
He was back in the house, sitting at the be-flowered table, listening
in some confusion to the speeches and the bursts of laughter which
assailed each speaker as he made his point: now he was on his feet,
talking easily, without effort, but what words he used, or why people
applauded, or why they smiled he could not say.
Once in its course he had looked down at the delicate face by his
side, and had met those solemn eyes of hers, less fearful to-day, it
seemed, than ever he had seen them. He had felt for her hand and had
held it, cold and unresponsive, in his.…
“An excellent speech,” said Leslie.
They were in the drawing-room after the breakfast.
“You’re quite an orator.”
“Am I?” said Gilbert.
He was beginning to wake again. The drawing-room was real, these
people were real, the jokes, the badinage, and the wit which flew from
tongue to tongue--all these things were of a life he knew.
“Whew!” He wiped his forehead and breathed a deep sigh. He felt like a
man who had regained consciousness after an anæsthetic that did not
quite take effect. A painless and a beautiful experience, but of
another world, and it was not he, so he told himself, who had knelt at
the altar rail.
* * * *
Officially the honeymoon was to be spent at Harrogate, actually it was
to be spent in London. They preserved the pretence of catching a
train, and drove to King’s Cross.
No word was spoken throughout that journey. Gilbert felt the
restriction, and did not challenge it or seek to overcome it. The girl
was naturally silent. She had so much to say in the proper place and
at the proper time. He saw the old fear come back to her eyes, was
hurt by the unconscious and involuntary shrinking when his hand
touched hers.
The carriage was dismissed at King’s Cross. A taxi-cab was engaged,
and they drove to the house in St. John’s Wood. It was empty, the
servants had been sent away on a holiday, but it was a perfectly
fitted little mansion. There were electric cookers, and every
labour-saving appliance the mind of man could devise, or a young man
with great expectations and no particular idea of the value of money
could acquire.
This was to be one of the joys of the honeymoon, so Gilbert had told
himself. She had willingly dispensed with her maid; he was ready to be
man-of-all-work, to cook and to serve, leaving the rough work for the
two new day servants he had employed to come in in the morning.
Yet it was with no sense of joyfulness that he led her from room to
room, showed her the treasures of his household. A sense of
apprehension of some coming trouble laid its hand upon his tongue,
damped his spirit, and held him in temporary bondage.
The girl was self-possessed. She admired, criticised kindly, and
rallied him gently upon his domesticity. But the strain was there all
the time; there was a shadow which lay between them.
She went to her room to change. They had arranged to go out to dinner,
and this programme they followed. Leslie Frankfort saw them in the
dining hall of Princes, and pretended he didn’t know them. It was ten
o’clock when they went back to their little house.
Gilbert went to his study; his wife had gone up to her room and had
promised to come down for coffee. He went to work with all the skill
which a pupil of Rahbat might be expected to display, and brewed two
tiny little cups of Mocha. This he served on the table near the settee
where she would sit… Then she came in.
He had been fast awakening from the dream of the morning. He was alive
now. The dazement of that momentous ceremony had worn away. He rose
and went a little way towards her. He would have taken her in his arms
then and there, but this time the arm’s length was a reality. Her hand
touched his breast, and the arm stiffened. He felt the rebuff in the
act, and it seemed to him that his heart went cold, and that all the
vague terrors of the previous days crystallised into one concrete and
terrible truth. He knew all that she had to say before she spoke.
It was some time before she found the words she wanted, the opening
was so difficult.
“Gilbert,” she said at last, “I am going to do a cowardly thing. It is
only cowardly because I have not told you before.”
He motioned her to the settee.
He had woven a little romance for this moment, a dream scene which was
never to be enacted. Here was the shattering.
“I won’t sit down,” she said, “I want all my strength to tell you what
I have to tell you. If I hadn’t been an arrant coward I should have
told you last night. I meant to tell you,” she said, “but you did not
come.”
He nodded.
“I know,” he said, almost impatiently. “I could not come. I did not
wish--I could not come,” he repeated.
“You know what I have to tell you?” Her eyes were steadily fixed on
his. “Gilbert, I do not love you.”
He nodded again.
“I know now,” he said.
“I never have loved you,” she said in tones of despair; “there never
was any time when I regarded you as more than a dear friend. But----”
She wanted to tell him why, but a sense of loyalty to her mother kept
her silent. She would take all the blame, for was she not blameworthy?
For she, at least, was mistress of her own soul: had she wished, she
could have taken a line of greater resistance than that which she had
followed.
“I married you,” she went on slowly, “because--because you
are--rich--because you will be rich.”
Her voice dropped at the last word until it was husky. There was a
hard fight going on within her. She wanted to tell the truth, and yet
she did not want him to think so badly of her as that.
“For my money!” he repeated wonderingly.
“Yes, I--I wanted to marry a man with money. We have had--a very hard
time.”
The confession came in little gasps; she had to frame every sentence
before she spoke.
“You mustn’t blame mother, I was equally guilty; and I ought to have
told you--I wanted to tell you.”
“I see,” he said calmly.
It is wonderful what reserves of strength come at a man’s bidding. In
this terrible crisis, in this moment when the whole of his life’s
happiness was shattered, when the fabric of his dream was crumbling
like a house of paper, he could be judicial, almost phlegmatic.
He saw her sway, and springing to her side caught her.
“Sit down,” he said quietly.
She obeyed without protest. He settled her in the corner of the
settee, pushed a cushion almost viciously behind her, and walked back
to the fireplace.
“So you married me for my money,” he said, and laughed.
It was not without its amusing side, this situation.
“By Heaven, what a comedy--what a comedy!” He laughed again. “My poor
child,” he said, with unaccustomed irony, “I am sorry for you, for you
have secured neither husband nor money!”
She looked up at him quickly.
“Nor money,” she repeated.
There was only interest that he saw in her eyes. There was no hint of
disappointment. He knew the truth, more than she had told him: it was
not she who desired a fortune, it was this mother of hers, this
domineering, worldly woman.
“No husband and no money,” he repeated savagely, in spite of the
almost yearning desire which was in him to spare her.
“And worse than that”--with two rapid strides he was at the desk which
separated them, and bent across it, leaning heavily--“not only have
you no husband, and not only is there no money, but----”
He stopped as if he had been shot.
The girl, looking at him, saw his face go drawn and grey, saw the eyes
staring wildly past her, the mouth open in tragic dismay. She got up
quickly.
“What is it? What is it?” she whispered in alarm.
“My God!”
His voice was cracked; it was the voice of a man in terror. She half
bent her head, listening. From somewhere beneath the window arose the
soft, melancholy strains of a violin. The music rose and fell, sobbing
and pulsating with passion beneath the magic of the player’s fingers.
She stepped to a window and looked out. On the edge of the pavement a
girl was playing, a girl whose poverty of dress did not hide her
singular beauty.
The light from the street lamp fell upon her pale face, her eyes were
fixed on the window where Gilbert was standing.
Edith looked at her husband. He was shaking like a man with fever.
“The ‘Melody in F,’” he whispered. “My God! The ‘Melody in F’--and on
my wedding day!”
CHAPTER V.
THE MAN WHO DESIRED WEALTH
Leslie Frankfort was one of a group of three who stood in the inner
office of Messrs. Warrell & Bird before a huge safe. There was plenty
to attract and hold their attention, for the floor was littered with
tools of every shape and description.
The safe itself bore evidence of a determined assault. A semi-circle
of holes had been burnt in its solid iron door about the lock.
“They did that with an oxyhydrogen blow-pipe,” said one of the men.
He indicated a number of iron tubes which lay upon the ground with the
rest of the paraphernalia. “They made a thorough job of it. I wonder
what disturbed them.”
The eldest of the men shook his head.
“I expect the night watchman may have alarmed them,” he said. “What do
you think, Frankfort?”
“I haven’t got over my admiration for their thoroughness yet,” said
Leslie. “Why, the beggars must have used about a couple of hundred
pounds’ worth of tools.”
He pointed to the kit on the ground. The detective’s gaze followed his
extended finger. He smiled.
“Yes,” he said quietly, “these people are pretty thorough. You say
you’ve lost nothing?”
Mr. Warrell shook his head.
“Yes and no,” he said carefully. “There was a diamond necklace which
was deposited there last week by a client of ours--that has gone. I am
anxious for the moment that this loss should not be reported.”
The detective looked at him wonderingly.
“That is rather a curious request,” he said, with a smile; “and you
don’t usually have diamond necklaces in a stockbroker’s office--if I
may be allowed to make that critical remark.”
Mr. Warrell smiled.
“It isn’t usual,” he said, “but a client of ours who went abroad last
week came in just twenty minutes before the train left, and asked us
to take care of the jewel cases.”
Mr. Warrell said this carelessly. He did not explain to the detective
that they were held as security against the very large difference
which the client had incurred; nor did he think it necessary to
explain that he had kept the jewels in the office in the hope that the
embarrassed lady might be able to redeem them.
“Did anybody know they were there except yourself and your partners?”
Warrell shook his head.
“I don’t think so. I have never mentioned it to anybody. Have you,
Leslie?”
Leslie hesitated.
“Well, I’m bound to admit that I did,” he confessed, “though it was to
somebody who would not repeat it.”
“Who was it?” asked Warrell.
“To Gilbert Standerton. I certainly mentioned the matter when we were
discussing safe robberies.”
The elder man nodded.
“I hardly think he is the sort of person who is likely to burgle a
safe.”
He smiled.
“It is a very curious coincidence,” said Leslie reflectively, “that he
and I were talking about this very gang only a couple of days ago
before he was married. I suppose,” he asked the detective suddenly,
“there is no doubt that this is the work of your international
friend?”
Chief Inspector Goldberg nodded his head.
“No doubt whatever, sir,” he said. “There is only one gang in England
which could do this, and I could lay my hands on them to-day, but it
would be a million pounds to one against my being able to secure at
the same time evidence to convict them.”
Leslie nodded brightly.
“That is what I was telling Gilbert,” he said, turning to his partner.
“Isn’t it extraordinary that these things can be in the twentieth
century? Here we have three or four men who are known--you told me
their names, Inspector, after the last attempt--and yet the police are
powerless to bring home their guilt to them. It does seem curious,
doesn’t it?”
Inspector Goldberg was not amused, but he permitted himself to smile
politely.
“But then you’ve got to remember how difficult it is to collect
evidence against men who work on such a huge scale as do these bank
smashers. What I can’t understand,” he said, “is what attraction your
safe has for them. This second attempt is a much more formidable one
than the last.”
“Yes, this is really a burglary,” said Mr. Warrell. “In the last case
there was nothing so elaborate in their preparations, though they were
much more successful, in so far as they were able to open the safe.”
“I suppose you don’t want more of this to get in the papers than you
can help,” said the Inspector.
Mr. Warrell shook his head.
“I don’t want any of it to get in till I have seen my client,” he
said; “but I am entirely in your hands, and you must make such
arrangements as you deem necessary.”
“Very good,” said the detective. “For the moment I do not think it is
necessary to make any statement at all. If the reporters get hold of
it, you had better tell them as much of the truth as you want to tell
them, but the chances are that they won’t even get to hear of it as
you communicated directly to the Yard.”
The police officer spent half an hour collecting and making notes of
such data as he was able to secure. At the end of that time the old
Jewry sent a contingent of plain clothes policemen to remove the
tools.
The burglars had evidently entered the office after closing hours on
the previous night, and had worked through the greater part of the
evening, and possibly far into the night, in their successful attempt
to cut out the lock of the safe. That they had been disturbed in their
work was evident from the presence of the tools. This was not their
first burglary in the City of London. During the previous six months
the City had been startled by a succession of daring robberies, the
majority of which had been successful.
The men had shown extraordinary knowledge of the safe’s contents, and
it was this fact which had induced the police to narrow their circle
of inquiry to three apparently innocent members of an outside broker’s
firm. But try as they might, no evidence could be secured which might
even remotely associate them with the crime.
Leslie remembered now that he had laughingly challenged Gilbert
Standerton to qualify for the big reward which two firms at least had
offered for the recovery of their stolen goods.
“After all,” he said, “with your taste and genius, you would make an
ideal thief-catcher.”
“Or a thief,” Gilbert had answered moodily. It had been one of his bad
days, a day on which his altered prospects had preyed upon him.
A telegram was waiting for Leslie when he entered the narrow portals
of the City Proscenium Club. He took it down and opened it leisurely,
and read its contents. A puzzled frown gathered on his forehead. It
ran:--
“I must see you this afternoon. Meet me at Charing Cross Station four
o’clock.--Gilbert.”
Punctually to the minute Leslie reached the terminus. He found Gilbert
pacing to and fro beneath the clock, and was shocked at his
appearance.
“What on earth is the matter with you?” he asked.
“Matter with me?” demanded the other hardly, “what do you think is the
matter with me?”
“Are you in trouble?” asked Leslie anxiously.
He was genuinely fond of this friend of his.
“Trouble?” Gilbert laughed bitterly. “My dear good chap, I am always
in trouble. Haven’t I been in trouble since the first day I met you? I
want you to do something for me,” he went on briskly. “You were
talking the other day about money. I have recognised the tragedy of my
own dependence. I have got to get money, and get it quick.”
He spoke briskly, and in a matter-of-fact tone, but Leslie heard a
determination which had never formed part of his friend’s equipment.
“I want to know something about shares and stocks and things of that
sort,” Gilbert went on. “You’ll have to instruct me. I don’t suppose
you know much about it yourself”--he smiled, with a return to the old
good-humour--“but what little you know you’ve got to impart to me.”
“My dear chap,” protested the other, “why the devil are you worrying
about a thing like that for on your honeymoon? Where is your wife, by
the way?”
“Oh, she’s at the house,” said the other shortly. He did not feel
inclined to discuss her, and Leslie, in his amazement, had sufficient
tact to pass over the subject.
“I can tell you all I know now, if you want a tip,” he said.
“I want something bigger than a tip--I want investments. I want you to
tell me something that will bring in about twelve thousand a year.”
Leslie stopped and looked at the other.
“Are you quite----?” he began.
Gilbert smiled, a crooked little smile.
“Am I right in my head?” he finished. “Oh, yes, I am quite sane.”
“But don’t you see,” said the other, “you would want a little over a
quarter of a million to bring in that interest.”
Gilbert nodded.
“I had an idea that some such amount was required. I want you to get
me out between to-night and to-morrow a list of securities in which I
can invest and which must be gilt-edged, and must, as I say, secure
for me, or for my heirs, the sum I have mentioned.”
“And did you,” asked the indignant Leslie, “bring me to this beastly
place on a hot afternoon in June to pull my leg about your dream
investments?”
But something in Gilbert’s face checked his humour.
“Seriously, do you mean this?” he asked.
“Seriously, I mean it.”
“Well, then, I’ll give you the list like a shot. What has
happened--has uncle relented?”
Gilbert shook his head.
“He is not likely to relent,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I had a
note to-day from his secretary to tell me that he is pretty ill. I’m
awfully sorry.” There was a genuine note of regret in his tone. “He is
a decent old chap.”
“There’s no reason why he should hand over his wealth to the
‘demnition bow-wows,’” quoted Leslie indignantly. “But why did you
meet me here, my son? Your club is round the corner.”
“I know,” said Gilbert; “but the club is--well, to tell you the
truth,” he said, “I am giving up the club.”
“Giving up your club?” He stood squarely before the taller man. “Now
just tell me,” he asked deliberately, “what the Dickens all this
means? You’re giving up your club, you’ll be giving up your Foreign
Office job next, my Crœsus!”
Gilbert nodded.
“I have given up the Foreign Office work,” he said quietly. “I want
all the time I can get,” he went on, speaking rapidly. “I want every
moment of the day for my own plans and my own schemes. You don’t know
what it’s all about, my dear chap”--he laid his hand affectionately on
the other’s shoulder--“but just believe that I am in urgent need of
all the advice you can give me, and I only want the advice for which I
ask.”
“Which means that I am not to poke my nose in your business unless I
have a special invitation card all printed and decorated. Very good,”
laughed Leslie. “Now come along to my club. I suppose as a result of
your brief married life you haven’t conceived a dislike to all clubs?”
Gilbert made no answer, nor did they return again to the subject until
they were ensconced in the spacious smoking-room of the Junior
Terriers.
For two hours the men sat there, Gilbert questioning eagerly,
pointedly, jotting down notes upon a sheet of paper. The other
answered, often with some difficulty, the running fire of questions
which his friend put.
“I didn’t know how little I knew,” confessed the young man ruefully,
as Gilbert wrote down the last answer to the very last question. “What
an encyclopædic questioner you are; you’re a born examiner, Gilbert.”
Gilbert smiled faintly as he slipped the sheet of paper into his
pocket.
“By the way,” he said, as they were leaving the club, “I made my will
this morning and I want you to be my executor.”
Leslie pushed his hat back with a groan.
“You’re the most cheerless bird I’ve met for quite a long time,” he
said in exasperation. “You were married yesterday, you’re wandering
round to-day with a face as long as an undertaker’s tout--I understand
such interesting and picturesque individuals exist in the East End of
London--you’ve chucked up the billet that’s bringing you in quite a
lot of money, you’ve discussed investments, and you’ve made your will.
You’re a most depressing devil!”
Again Gilbert smiled: he was grimly amused. He shook hands with the
young man before the club and called a taxi-cab to him.
“I’m going to St. John’s Wood. I suppose you’re not going my way?”
“I am relieved to hear that you are going to St. John’s Wood,” said
the other with mock politeness. “I feared you were going to the
nearest crematorium.”
Gilbert found his wife in the study on his return. She was sitting on
the big settee reading. The stress of the previous night had left no
mark upon her beautiful face. She favoured him with a smile.
Instinctively they had both adopted the attitude which best met the
circumstances. Her respect for him had increased, even in that short
space of time; he had so well mastered himself in that moment of
terror--terror which in an indefinable way had communicated itself to
her. He had met her the next morning at breakfast cheerfully; but she
did not doubt that he had spent a sleepless night, for his eyes were
heavy and tired, and in spite of his geniality his voice was sharp, as
are the voices of men who have cheated Nature.
He walked straight to his desk now.
“Do you want to be alone?” she asked.
He looked up with a start.
“No, no,” he said hastily, “I’ve no wish to be alone. I’ve a little
work to do, but you won’t bother me. You ought to know,” he said with
an affectation of carelessness, “that I am resigning my post.”
“Your post!” she repeated.
“Yes; I find I have so much to do, and the Foreign Office takes up so
much of my time that I really can’t spare, that it came to a question
of giving up that or something else.”
He did not enlighten her as to what that “something else” was, nor
could she guess. Already he was an enigma to her; she found, strange
though it seemed to her, a new interest in him. That there was some
tragedy in his life, a tragedy unsuspected by her, she did not doubt.
He had told her calmly and categorically the story of his
disinheritance; at his request, she had put the whole of that story
into a letter which she had addressed to her mother. She felt no
qualms, no inward quaking, at the prospect of the inevitable
encounter, though Mrs. Cathcart would be enraged beyond reason.
Edith smiled a little to herself as she had stuck down the flap of the
envelope. This was poetic justice, though she herself might be a
life-long sufferer by reason of her worldly parent’s schemings. She
had hoped that as a result of that letter, posted early in the
morning, her mother would have called and the interview would have
been finished before her husband returned. But Gilbert had been in the
house half an hour when the blow fell. The tinkle of the hall bell
brought the girl to her feet: she had been waiting, her ears strained,
for that aggressive ring.
She herself flew down the stairs to open the door.
Mrs. Cathcart entered without a word, and as the girl closed the door
behind her she turned.
“Where is that precious husband of yours?” she asked in a choked
voice.
“My husband is in his study,” said the girl calmly. “Do you want him,
mother?”
“Do I want him?” she repeated in a choked voice.
Edith saw the glare in the woman’s eyes, saw, too, the pinched and
haggard cheek. For one brief moment she pitied this woman, who had
seen all her dreams shattered at a moment when she had hoped that
their realisation was inevitable.
“Does he know I am coming?”
“I think he rather expects you,” said the girl dryly.
“I will see him by myself,” said Mrs. Cathcart, turning half-way up
the stairs.
“You will see him with me, mother, or you will not see him at all,”
said the girl.
“You will do as I tell you, Edith,” stormed the woman.
The girl smiled.
“Mother,” she said gently, “you have ceased to have any right to
direct me. You have handed me over to another guardian whose claims
are greater than yours.”
It was not a good preparation for the interview that was to follow.
Edith recognised this even as she opened the door and ushered her
mother in.
When Gilbert saw who his visitor was he rose with a little bow. He did
not offer his hand. He knew something of what this woman was feeling.
“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Cathcart?” he said.
“I’ll stand for what I have to say,” she snapped. “Now, what is the
meaning of this?” She threw down the letter which the girl had
written, and which she had read and re-read until every word was
engraven on her mind. “Is it true,” she asked fiercely, “that you are
a poor man? That you have deceived us? That you have lied your way
into a marriage----”
He held up his hand.
“You seem to forget, Mrs. Cathcart,” he said with dignity, “that the
question of my position has already been discussed by you and me, and
you have been most emphatic in impressing upon me the fact that no
worldly considerations would weigh with you.”
“Worldly!” she sneered. “What do you mean by worldly, Mr. Standerton?
Are you not in the world? Do you not live in a house and eat bread and
butter that costs money? Do you not use motor-cars that require money
for their upkeep? Whilst I am living in the world and you are living
in the world worldly considerations will always count. I thought you
were a rich man; you’re a beggar.”
He smiled a little contemptuously.
“A pretty mess you’ve made of it,” she said harshly. “You’ve got a
woman who doesn’t love you--I suppose you know that?”
He bowed.
“I know all that, Mrs. Cathcart,” he said. “I knew the worst when I
learnt that. The fact that you so obviously planned the marriage
because you thought that I was Sir John Standerton’s heir does not
hurt me, because I have met so many women like you, only”--he shrugged
his shoulders--“I must confess that I thought you were a little
different to the rest of worldly mothers--forgive me if I use that
word again. But you are not any better--you may be a little worse,” he
said, his thoughtful eyes upon her face.
He was looking at her with a curious something which the woman could
not quite understand in his eyes. She had seen that look somewhere,
and in spite of herself she shivered. The anger died away in fear.
“I wanted you to postpone this wedding,” he went on softly. “I had an
especial reason, a reason I will not give you, but which will interest
you in a few months’ time. But you were fearful of losing your rich
son-in-law. I didn’t realise then that that was your fear. I have
satisfied myself--it really doesn’t matter how,” he said steadily,
“that you are more responsible than I for this good match.”
He was a changed man. Mrs. Cathcart in her gusty rage could recognise
this: there was a new soul, a new spirit, a new determination,
and--that was it!--a new and terrible ferocity which shone from his
eyes and for the moment hardened his face till it was almost terrible
to look upon.
“Your daughter married me under a misapprehension. She told you all
that I had to tell--almost all,” he corrected himself, “and I
anticipated this visit. Had you not come I should have sent for you.
Your daughter is as free as the air as far as I am concerned. I
suppose your worldliness extends to a knowledge of the law? She can
sue for a divorce to-morrow, and attain it without any difficulty and
with little publicity.”
A gleam of hope came to the woman’s face.
“I never thought of that,” she said half to herself. She turned
quickly to her daughter, for she was a woman of action. “Get your
things and come with me.”
Edith did not stir. She stood the other side of the table, half facing
her husband and wholly facing her mother.
“You hear what Mr. Standerton says,” said Mrs. Cathcart irritably. “He
has opened a way of escape to you. What he says is true. A divorce can
be obtained with no difficulty. Come with me. I will send for your
clothes.”
Edith still did not move.
Mrs. Cathcart, watching her, saw her features soften one by one, saw
the lips part in a smile and the head fall back as peal after peal of
clear laughter rang through the room.
“Oh, mother!” The infinite contempt of the voice struck the woman like
the lash of a whip. “You don’t know me! Go back with you? Divorce him?
You’re mad! If he had been a rich man indeed I might; but for the time
being, though I do not love him, and though I should not blame him and
do not blame him if he does not love me, my lot is cast with his, my
place is here.”
“Melodrama!” said the elder woman angrily.
“There’s a lot of truth and no end of decency in melodrama, Mrs.
Cathcart,” said Gilbert.
His mother-in-law stood livid with rage, then turning, flung out of
the room, and they heard the front door slam behind her.
They looked at each other, this strangely-married pair, for the space
of a few seconds, and then Gilbert held out his hand.
“Thank you,” he said.
The girl dropped her eyes.
“You have nothing to thank me for,” she said listlessly. “I have done
you too much wrong for one little act to wipe out all the effects of
my selfishness.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE SAFE AGENCY
The City of London is filled, as all the world knows, with
flourishing and well-established businesses.
It abounds in concerns which proclaim, either with dignity or
flamboyantly, the fact that this shop stood where it did a hundred
years ago, and is still being carried on by the legitimate descendants
of its founders.
There are companies and syndicates and trading associations, housed in
ornate and elaborate buildings, suites of offices, which come into
existence in the spring and fade away to nothingness in the winter,
leaving a residue of unpaid petty accounts, and a landlord who has
only this satisfaction--that he was paid his rent in advance.
The tragedies of the City of London lay in a large sense round the
ugly and unpretentious buildings of the Stock Exchange, and may be
found in the seedy sprinkling of people who perambulate the streets
round and round that grimy building like so many disembodied spirits.
But the tragic gambler is not peculiar to the metropolis, and the
fortunes made and lost in a day or in an hour has its counterpart in
every city in the world where stock transactions are conducted.
The picturesque sorrows of the city are represented in the popular
mind with the human wreckage which strews the Embankment after dark,
or goes shuffling along the edges of the pavement with downcast eyes
seeking for discarded cigar ends. That is sorrowful enough, though the
unhappy objects of our pity are considerably more satisfied with their
lot than most people would imagine.
The real tragedy and sorrow is to be found in the hundred and one
little businesses which come into existence joyfully, and swallow up
the savings of years of some two or three optimistic individuals. The
flourishing note heads which are issued from brand new offices
redolent of paint and fresh varnish, the virgin books imposingly
displayed upon new shelves, the mass of correspondence which goes
daily forth, the booklets and the leaflets, the explanatory tables and
all the paraphernalia of the inexperienced advertiser, and the trickle
of replies which come back--they are all part of the sad game.
Some firms endeavour to establish themselves with violence, with a
flourish of their largest trumpets. Some drift into business
noiselessly, and in some mysterious way make good. Generally, one may
suppose, they came with the invaluable asset of a “connection,”
shifting up from the suburbs to a more impressive address.
One of the businesses which came into existence in London in the year
1924 was a firm which was defined in the telephone book and in the
directory as “The St. Bride’s Safe Company.” It dealt in new and
second-hand safes, strong rooms and all the cunning machinery of
protection.
In its one show-room were displayed safes of every make, new and old,
gratings, burglar alarms, cash boxes, big and small, and the examples
of all that iron and steel could do to resist the attention of the
professional burglar.
The principal of the business was apparently a Midland gentleman, who
engaged a staff, including a manager and a salesman, by advertisement,
interviewed the newly-engaged employees in the Midlands, and placed at
the disposal of the manager, who came armed with unimpeachable
testimonials, a sum of money sufficient to stock the store and carry
on the business.
He found more supplies from time to time in addition to the floating
stock-in-trade, and though orders came very infrequently, the
proprietor of the concern cheerfully continued to pay the large rent
and the fairly generous salaries of the staff.
The proprietor would occasionally visit the store, generally late at
night, because, as he explained, his business in Birmingham required
his constant attention.
The new stock would be inspected; there would be a stock-taking of
keys--these were usually kept in the private safe of the firm--and the
proprietor would invariably express his satisfaction with the progress
of the business.
The manager himself never quite understood how his chief could make
this office pay, but he evidently did a big trade in the provinces,
because he was able to keep a large motor lorry and a driver, who from
time to time appeared at the Bride Street store, brought a safe which
would be unloaded, or carried away some purchased article to its new
owners.
The manager, a Mr. Timmings, and a respectable member of Balham
society, could only imagine that the provincial branch of the business
was fairly extensive. Sometimes the motor lorry would come with every
evidence of having travelled for many miles, and it would seem that
the business flourished, at any rate, at the Birmingham end.
It was the day following the remarkable occurrence which is chronicled
in the previous chapter that Gilbert Standerton decided amongst other
things to purchase a safe.
He needed one for his home, and there were reasons which need not be
particularised why such an article of furniture was necessary. He had
never felt the need of a safe before. When he did, he wanted to get
one right away. It was unfortunate, or fortunate as the case may be,
that this resolve did not come to him until an hour when most dealers
in these unusual commodities were closed. It was after six when he
arrived in the City.
Mr. Timmings had gone away early that night, but he had left a most
excellent deputy.
The proprietor had come to London a little earlier that evening, and
through the glass street doors Gilbert saw him and stared.
The door was locked when he tried it, and with a cheery smile the new
proprietor came forward himself and unbolted it.
“We are closed,” he said, “and I am afraid my manager has gone home.
Can I do anything for you?”
Gilbert looked at him.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I want to buy a safe.”
“Then possibly I can help you,” said the gentleman good-naturedly.
“Won’t you come in?”
Gilbert entered, and the door was bolted behind him.
“What kind of safe do you want?” asked the man.
“I want a small one,” said the other. “I would like a second-hand
Chubb if you have one.”
“I think I have got the very thing. I suppose you want it for your
office?”
Gilbert shook his head.
“No, I want it for my house,” he said shortly, “and I would like it
delivered almost at once.”
He made an inspection of the various receptacles for valuables, and
finally made a choice.
He was on his way out, when he saw the great safe which stood at the
end of the store.
It was rather out of the ordinary, being about eight feet in height
and about that width. It looked for all the world like a great steel
wardrobe. Three sets of locks guarded the interior, and there was in
addition a small combination lock.
“That is a very handsome safe,” said Gilbert.
“Isn’t it?” said the other carelessly.
“What is the value of that?”
“It is sold,” said the proprietor a little brusquely.
“Sold? I should like to see the interior,” said Gilbert.
The man smiled at him and stroked his upturned moustache thoughtfully.
“I am sorry I can’t oblige you,” he said. “The fact is, the new
proprietor took the keys when he completed the purchase.”
“That is very unfortunate,” said Gilbert, “for this is one of the most
interesting safes I have ever seen.”
“It is quite usual,” said the other briefly. He tapped the sides with
his knuckles in a reflective mood. “It is rather an expensive piece of
property.”
“It looks as if you had it here permanently.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” said the other absently. “I had to make it
comfortable.”
He smiled, then he led the way to another part of the store.
Gilbert would have paid by cheque, but something prevented him. He
searched his pockets, and found the fifteen pounds which had been
asked for the safe.
With a pleasant good-night he was ushered out of the shop, and the
door was closed behind him.
“Where have I seen your face before?” said the proprietor to himself.
Though he was a very clever man in more ways than one, it is a curious
fact that he never placed his customer until many months afterwards.
CHAPTER VII.
THE BANK SMASHER
Three men sat in the inner room of a City office. The outer door was
locked, the door communicating between the outer office and the
sanctum was wide open.
The men sat at a table, discussing a frugal lunch which had been
brought in from a restaurant near by, and talking together in low
tones.
George Wallis, who spoke with such authority as to suggest that he
held a leading position above and before the others, was a man of
forty, inclined a little to stoutness, of middle height, and with no
distinguishing features save the short bristling moustache and the
jet-black eyebrows which gave his face a somewhat sinister appearance.
His eyes were tired and lazy, his square jaw bespoke immense
determination, and the hands which played idly with a pen were small
but strong; they were the hands of an artist, and indeed George
Wallis, under one name or another, was known as an artist in his
particular profession in every police bureau on the Continent.
Callidino, the little Italian at his side, was neat and dapper. His
hair was rather long, he suggested rather the musical enthusiast than
the cool-headed man of business. And yet this dapper Italian was known
as the most practical of the remarkable trio which for many years had
been the terror of every bank president in France.
The third was Persh, a stout man with a pleasant, florid face, and a
trim cavalry moustache, who, despite his bulk, was a man of
extraordinary agility, and his escape from Devil’s Island and his
subsequent voyage to Australia in an open boat will be fresh in the
minds of the average newspaper readers.
They made no disguise as to their identities, they did not evade the
frank questioning which was their lot when the City Police smelt them
out and came in to investigate the affairs of this “outside brokers’”
establishment. The members of the City force were a little
disappointed to discover that quite a legitimate business was being
done. You cannot quarrel even with convicted bank robbers if they
choose to get their living by any way which, however much discredited,
is within the law; and beyond warning those of their clients with whom
they could get in touch that the heads of this remarkable business
were notorious criminals, the police must needs sit by and watch,
satisfied that sooner or later the men would make a slip that would
bring them within the scope of police action.
“And they will have to wait a jolly long time,” said Wallis.
He looked round his “Board” with an amused smile.
“Have they been in to-day?” asked Callidino.
“They have been in to-day,” said Wallis gravely. “They have searched
our books and our desks and our clothes, and even the legs of our
office stools.”
“An indelicate proceeding,” said Persh cheerfully.
“And what did they find, George?”
George smiled.
“They found all there was to be found,” he said.
“I suppose it was the burglary at the Bond Guarantees that I have been
reading about that’s excited them,” said the Italian coolly.
“I suppose so,” said Wallis, with grave indifference. “It is pretty
terrible to have names such as we possess. Seriously,” he went on, “I
am not very much afraid of the police, even suppose there was anything
to find. I haven’t met one of them who has the intelligence of that
cool devil we met at the Foreign Office, when I had to answer some
questions about Persh’s unique experiences on Devil’s Island.”
“What was his name?” asked Persh, interested.
“Something associated in my mind with South Africa--oh, yes,
Standerton. A cool beast--I met him at Epsom the other day,” said
Wallis. “He’s lost in a place like the Foreign Office. Do you remember
that quick run through he gave me, Persh?”
The other nodded.
“Before I knew where I was I admitted that I’d been in Huntingdonshire
the same week as Lady Perkinton’s jewels were taken. If he’d had
another five minutes I guess he’d have known”--he lowered his voice to
little more than a whisper--“all this hidden treasure which the
English police are seeking was cached.”
The men laughed as at some great joke.
“Talking of cool people,” said Wallis, “do you recall that weird devil
who held us up in Hatton Garden?”
“Have you found him?” asked Callidino.
George shook his head.
“No,” he said slowly, “only I’m rather afraid of him.”
Which was a remarkable confession for him to make. He changed the
subject abruptly.
“I suppose you people know,” said Wallis, “that the police are
particularly active just now? I’ve reason to be aware of the fact,
because they have just concluded a most exhaustive search of my
private belongings.”
He did not exaggerate. The police were, indeed, most eager for some
clue to associate these three known criminals with the acts of the
past month.
Half an hour later Wallis left the building. He paused in the entrance
hall of the big block of offices, lighted a cigar with an air that
betokened his peace with the world and his approval of humanity.
As his foot touched the pavement a tall man stepped to his side.
Wallis looked up quickly and gave a little nod.
“I want you,” said the tall man coldly.
“Do you indeed?” said Wallis with exaggerated interest. “And what may
you want with me?”
“You come along with me, and not so much of your lip,” said the man.
He called a cab, and the two men were rapidly driven to the nearest
City police station. Wallis continued smoking his cigar, without any
outward indication of apprehension. He would have chatted very gaily
with the officer who had effected his arrest, but the officer himself
was in no mood for light humour.
He was hustled into the charge room and brought before the inspector’s
desk.
That officer looked up with a nod. He was more genial than his captor.
“Well, Wallis,” he said with a smile, “we want some information from
you.”
“You always want information from somebody,” said the man with cold
insolence. “Have you had another burglary?”
The inspector nodded.
“Tut, tut!” said the prisoner with an affectation of distress, “how
very annoying for you Mr. Whitling. I suppose you have got the
culprit?” he asked blandly.
“I’ve got you at present,” said the calm inspector. “I should not be
surprised if I had also got the culprit. Can you explain where you
were last night?”
“With the greatest of pleasure,” said Wallis; “I was dining with a
friend.”
“His name?”
The other shrugged his shoulders. “His name is immaterial. I was
dining with a friend whose name does not matter. Put that down,
inspector.”
“And where were you dining with this unknown friend?” asked the
imperturbable official.
Wallis named a restaurant in Wardour Street.
“At what hour were you dining?” asked the inspector patiently.
“Between the hours of eight and eleven,” said the man, “as the
proprietor of the restaurant will testify.”
The inspector smiled to himself. He knew the restaurant and knew the
proprietor. His testimony would not carry a great deal of weight with
a jury.
“Have you anybody respectable,” he asked, “who will vouch for the fact
that you were there, other than your unknown friend and Signor
Villimicci?”
Wallis nodded.
“I might name, with due respect,” he said, “Sergeant Colebrook, of the
Central Investigation Department of Scotland Yard.”
He was annoyingly bland. The inspector looked up sharply.
“Is he going to vouch for you?” he asked.
“He was watching me the whole of the time, disguised, I think, as a
gentleman. At least, he was in evening dress, and he was quite
different from the waiters. You see, he was sitting down.”
“I see,” said the inspector. He put down his pen.
“It was rather amusing to be watched by a real detective-sergeant,
from that most awe-inspiring wilderness of bricks,” the man continued.
“I quite liked it, though I am afraid the poor fellow was bored sooner
than I was.”
“I understand,” said the inspector, “that you were being watched from
eight o’clock last night till----?”
He paused inquiringly.
“Till near midnight, I should imagine. Until our dress-suited
detective, looking tragically like a detective all the time, had
escorted me to the front door of my flat.”
“I can verify that in a minute,” said the inspector. “Go into the
parade room.”
Wallis strolled unconcernedly into the inner room whilst the inspector
manipulated the telephone.
In five minutes the prisoner was sent for.
“You’re all right,” said the inspector. “Clean bill for you, Wallis.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Wallis. “Very relieved indeed!” He sighed
heavily. “Now that I am embarked upon what I might term a legalised
form of thefts from the public, it is especially pleasing to me to
know that my actions are approved by the police.”
“We don’t approve of everything you do,” said the inspector.
He was an annoying man, Wallis thought; he would neither lose his
temper nor be rude.
“You can go now--sorry to have bothered you.”
“Don’t mention it,” said the polite man with a little bow.
“By the way, before you go,” said the inspector, “just come into my
inner office, will you?”
Wallis followed him. The inspector closed the door behind them. They
were alone.
“Wallis, do you know there is a reward of some twelve thousand pounds
for the detection of the men engaged in these burglaries?”
“You surprise me,” said Mr. Wallis, lifting his eyebrows.
“I don’t surprise you,” said the inspector; “in fact, you know much
more about it than I do. And I tell you this, that we are prepared to
go to any lengths to track this gang, or, at any rate, to put an end
to its operations. Look here, George,” he tapped the other on the
chest with his strong, gnarled finger, “is it a scream?”
“A scream?” Mr. Wallis was puzzled innocence itself.
“Will you turn King’s evidence?” said the other shortly.
“I should be most happy,” said Wallis, with a helpless shrug, “but how
can I turn King’s evidence about a matter on which I am absolutely
uninformed? The reward is monstrously tempting. If I had companions in
crime I should need very little persuading. My conscience is a matter
of constant adjustment. It is rather like the foot-rule which
shoemakers employ to measure their customers’ feet--terrifically
adjustable. It has a sliding scale which goes up and down.”
“I don’t want to hear any more about your conscience,” said the
officer wearily. “Do you scream or don’t you?”
“I don’t scream,” said Mr. Wallis emphatically.
The inspector jerked his head sideways, and with the bow which the
invitation had interrupted, Mr. Wallis walked out into the street.
He knew, no one better, how completely every action of his was
watched. He knew, even as he left the station, that the seemingly idle
loafer on the corner of the street had picked him up, would follow him
until he handed him over to yet another plain-clothes officer for
observation. From beat to beat, from one end of the City to another,
those vigilant eyes would never leave him; whilst he slept, the door,
back and front of his lodging would be watched. He could not move
without all London--all the London that mattered as far as he was
concerned--knowing everything about that move.
His home was the upper part of a house over a tobacconist’s in a small
street off Charing Cross Road. And to his maisonette he made a
leisurely way, not hastening his steps any the more because he knew
that on one side of the street an innocent commercial traveller, and
on the other a sandwich man apparently trudging homeward with his
board, were keeping him under observation. He stopped to buy some
cigars in the Charing Cross Road, crossed near the Alhambra, and ten
minutes later was unlocking the door of the narrow passage which ran
by the side of the shop, and gave him private access to the suite
above.
It was a room comfortably furnished and giving evidence of some taste.
Large divan chairs formed a feature of the furnishing, and the prints,
though few, were interesting by reason of their obvious rarity.
He did not trouble to make an examination of the room, or of the
remainder of the maisonette he rented. If the police had been, they
had been. If they had not, it did not matter. They could find nothing.
He had a good conscience, so far as a man’s conscience may be good who
fears less for the consequence of his deeds than for the apparent, the
obvious and the discoverable consequences.
He rang a bell, and after a little delay an old woman answered the
call.
“Make me some tea, Mrs. Skard,” he said. “Has anybody called?”
The old woman looked up to the ceiling for inspiration.
“Only the man about the gas,” she said.
“Only the man about the gas,” repeated George Wallis admiringly.
“Wasn’t he awfully surprised to find that we didn’t have gas at all?”
The old lady looked at him in some amazement.
“He did say he had come to see about the gas,” she said, “and then
when he found we had no gas he said ‘electricity’--a most
absent-minded young man.”
“They are that way, Mrs. Skard,” said her master tolerantly; “they
fall in love, don’t you know, round about this season of the year, and
when their minds become occupied with other and more pleasant thoughts
than gas mantles and incandescent lights they become a little
confused. I suppose he did not bother you--he told you you need not
wait?” he suggested.
“Quite right, sir,” said Mrs. Skard. “He said he would do all he had
to do without assistance.”
“And I will bet you he did it,” said George Wallis with boisterous
good humour.
Undisturbed by the knowledge that his rooms had been searched by an
industrious detective, he sat for an hour reading an American
magazine. At six o’clock a taxi-cab drove into the street and pulled
up before the entrance of his flat. The driver, a stoutish man with a
beard, looked helplessly up and down seeking a number, and one of the
two detectives who had been keeping observation on the house walked
across the road casually towards him.
“Do you want to find a number, mate?” he asked.
“I want No. 43,” said the cabman.
“That’s it,” said the officer.
He saw the cabman ring, and having observed that he entered the door,
which was closed behind him, he walked back to his co-worker.
“George is going to take a little taxi drive,” he said; “we will see
where he goes.”
The man who had waited on the other side of the road nodded.
“I don’t suppose he will go anywhere worth following, but I have the
car waiting round the corner.”
“I’ll car him,” said the second man bitterly. “Did you hear what he
told Inspector Whitling of the City Police about me last night?”
The first detective was considerably interested.
“No, I should like to hear.”
“Well,” began the man, and then thought better of it. It was nothing
to his credit that he should keep a man under observation three hours,
and that the quarry should be aware all the time that he was being
watched.
“Hullo!” he said as the door of No. 43 opened, “here is our man.”
He threw a swift glance along the street, and saw that the hired
motor-car which had been provided for his use was waiting.
“Here he comes,” he said, but it was not the man he expected. The
bearded chauffeur came out alone, waved a farewell to somebody in the
hall-way whom they could not see, and having started his engine with
great deliberation, got upon his seat, and the taxi-cab moved slowly
away.
“George is not going,” said the detective. “That means that we shall
have to stay here for another two or three hours--there is his light.”
For four long hours they kept their vigil, and never once was a pair
of eyes taken from the only door through which George Wallis could
make his exit. There was no other way by which he could leave, of that
they were assured.
Behind the house was a high wall, and unless the man was working in
collusion with half the respectable householders, not only in that
street but of Charing Cross Road, he could not by any possible chance
leave his flat.
At half-past ten the taxi-cab they had seen drove back to the door of
the flat, and the driver was admitted. He evidently did not expect to
stay long, for he did not switch off his engine; as a matter of fact,
he was not absent from his car longer than thirty seconds. He came
back almost immediately, climbed up on to his seat and drove away.
“I wonder what the game is?” asked the detective, a little puzzled.
“He has been to take a message somewhere,” said the other. “I think we
ought to have found out.”
Ten minutes later Inspector Goldberg, of Scotland Yard, drove into the
street and sprang from his car opposite the men.
“Has Wallis returned?” he asked quickly.
“Returned!” repeated the puzzled detective, “he has not gone out yet.”
“Has not gone out?” repeated the inspector with a gasp. “A man
answering to his description was seen leaving the City branch of the
Goldsmiths’ Guild half an hour ago. The safe has been forced and
twenty thousand pounds’ worth of jewelry has been taken.”
There was a little silence.
“Well, sir,” said the subordinate doggedly, “one thing I will swear,
and it is that George Wallis has not left this house to-night.”
“That’s true, sir,” said the second man. “The sergeant and I have not
left this place since Wallis went in.”
“But,” said the bewildered detective-inspector, “it must be Wallis, no
other man could have done the job as he did it.”
“It could not have been, sir,” persisted the watcher.
“Then who in the name of Heaven did the job?” snapped the inspector.
His underlings wisely offered no solution.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE WIFE WHO DID NOT LOVE
Mr. Warrell, of the firm of Warrell & Bird, prided himself upon
being a man of the world, and was wont to admit, in a mild spirit of
boastfulness, in which even middle-aged and respectable gentlemen
occasionally indulge, that he had been in some very awkward
situations. He had inferred that he had escaped from those situations
with some credit to himself.
Every stockbroker doing a popular and extensive business is confronted
sooner or later with the delicate task of explaining to a rash and
hazardous speculator exactly how rashly and at what hazard he has
invested his money.
Mr. Warrell had had occasion before to break, as gently as it was
possible to break, unpleasant news of Mrs. Cathcart’s unsuccess. But
never before had he been face to face with a situation so full of
possibilities for disagreeable consequences as this which now awaited
him.
The impassive Cole admitted him, and the face of Cole fell, for he
knew the significance of these visits, having learnt in that
mysterious way which servants have of discovering the inward secrets
of their masters’ and mistresses’ bosoms, that the arrival of Mr.
Warrell was usually followed by a period of retrenchment economy and
reform.
“Madam will see you at once,” was the message he returned with.
A few minutes later Mrs. Cathcart sailed into the drawing-room, a
little harder of face than usual, thought Mr. Warrell, and wondered
why.
“Well, Warrell,” she said briskly, “what machination of the devil has
brought you here? Sit down, won’t you?”
He seated himself deliberately. He placed his hat upon the floor, and
peeling his gloves, deposited them with unnecessary care in the
satin-lined interior.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Cathcart impatiently. “Are those Canadian
Pacifics down again?”
“They are slightly up,” said Mr. Warrell, with a smile which was
intended both to conciliate and to flatter. “I think your view on
Canadian Pacifics is a very sound one.”
He knew that Mrs. Cathcart would ordinarily desire nothing better than
a tribute to her judgment, but now she dismissed the compliment,
realising that he had not come all the way from Throgmorton Street to
say kindly things about her perspicacity.
“I will say all that is in my mind,” Mr. Warrell went on, choosing his
words and endeavouring by the adoption of a pained smile to express in
some tangible form his frankness. “You owe us some seven hundred
pounds, Mrs. Cathcart.”
She nodded.
“You have ample security,” she said.
“That I realise,” he agreed, addressing the ceiling, “but the question
is whether you are prepared to make good in actual cash the
differences which are due to us.”
“There is no question at all about it,” she said brusquely, “so far as
I am concerned, I cannot raise seven hundred shillings.”
“Suppose,” suggested Mr. Warrell, with his eyes still upraised,
“suppose I could find somebody who would be willing to buy your
necklace--I think that was the article you deposited with us--for a
thousand pounds?”
“It is worth considerably more than that,” said Mrs. Cathcart sharply.
“Possibly,” said the other, “but I am anxious to keep things out of
the paper.”
He had launched his bombshell.
“Exactly what do you mean?” she demanded, rising to her feet. She
stood glowering down at him.
“Do not misunderstand me,” he said hastily. “I will explain in a
sentence. Your diamond necklace has been stolen from my safe.”
“Stolen!”
She went white.
“Stolen,” said Mr. Warrell, “by a gang of burglars which has been
engaged in its operations for the past twelve months in the City of
London. You see, my dear Mrs. Cathcart,” he went on, “that it is a
very embarrassing situation for both of us. I do not want my clients
to know that I accept jewels from ladies as collateral security
against differences, and you,” he was so rude as to point to emphasise
his words, “do not, I imagine, desire your friends to know that it was
necessary for you to deposit those jewels.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Of course, I could have reported the matter to the police, sent out a
description of the necklace, and possibly recovered the loss from an
insurance company, but that I do not wish to do.”
He might have added, this good business man, that his insurance policy
would not have covered such a loss, for when premiums are adjusted to
cover the risk of a stockbroker’s office, they do not as a rule
foreshadow the possibility of a jewel robbery.
“I am willing to stand the loss myself,” he continued, “that is to
say, I am willing to make good a reasonable amount out of my own
pocket, as much for your sake as for mine. On the other hand, if you
do not agree to my suggestion, I have no other alternative than to
report the matter very, very fully, _very_ fully,” he repeated with
emphasis, “to the police and to the press. Now, what do you think?”
Mrs. Cathcart might have said in truth that she did not know what to
think.
The necklace was a valuable one, and there were other considerations.
Mr. Warrell was evidently thinking of its sentimental value, for he
went on--
“But for the fact that jewels of this kind have associations I might
suggest that your new son-in-law would possibly replace your loss.”
She turned upon him with a hard smile.
“My new son-in-law!” she scoffed. “Good Lord!”
Warrell knew Standerton, and regarded him as one of Fortune’s
favourites, and was in no doubt as to his financial stability.
The contempt in the woman’s tone shocked him as only a City man can be
shocked by a whisper against the credit of gilt-edged stock.
For the moment he forgot the object of his visit.
He would have liked to have asked for an explanation, but he felt that
it did not lie within the province of Mrs. Cathcart’s broker to demand
information upon her domestic affairs.
“It is a pretty rotten mess you have got me into, Warrell,” she said,
and got up.
He rose with her, picked up his hat, and exhumed his buried gloves.
“It is very awkward indeed,” he said, “tremendously awkward for you,
and tremendously awkward for me, my dear Mrs. Cathcart. I am sure you
will pity me in my embarrassment.”
“I am too busy pitying myself,” she said shortly.
She sat in the drawing-room alone after the broker’s departure.
What should she do? For what Warrell did not know was that the
necklace was not hers. It had been one which the old Colonel had had
reset for his daughter, and which had been bequeathed to the girl in
her father’s will.
A family circle which consists of a mother and a daughter exercises
communal rights over property which may appear curious to families
more extensive in point of number. Though Edith had known the jewel
was hers, she had not demurred when her mother had worn it, and had
never even hinted that she would prefer to include it amongst the
meagre stock of jewellery in her own case.
Yet it had always been known as “Edith’s necklace.”
Mrs. Cathcart had referred to it herself in these terms, and an
uncomfortable feature of their estrangement had been the question of
the necklace and its retention by the broker.
Mrs. Cathcart shrugged her shoulders. There was nothing to be done;
she must trust to luck. She could not imagine that Edith would ever
feel the need of the jewel; yet if her husband was poor, and she was
obsessed with this absurd sense of loyalty to the man who had deceived
her, there might be a remote possibility that from a sheer quixotic
desire to help her husband, she would make inquiries as to the
whereabouts of the necklace.
Edith was not like that, thought Mrs. Cathcart. It was a comforting
thought as she made her way up the stairs to her room.
She stopped half-way up to allow the maid to overtake her with the
letters which had arrived at that moment. With a little start she
recognised upon the first of these the handwriting of her daughter,
and tore open the envelope. The letter was brief:--
“Dear Mother,” it ran,
“Would you please arrange for me to have the necklace which father
left to me. I feel now that I must make some sort of display if only
for my husband’s sake.”
The letter dropped from Mrs. Cathcart’s hand. She stood on the stairs
transfixed.
* * * *
Edith Standerton was superintending the arrangement of the lunch table
when her husband came in. Life had become curiously systematised in
the St. John’s Wood house.
To neither of the young people had it seemed possible that they could
live together as now they did, in perfect harmony, in sympathy, yet
with apparently no sign of love or demonstration of affection on
either side.
To liken them to brother and sister would be hardly descriptive of
their friendship. They lacked the mutual knowledge of things, and the
common interest which brother and sister would have. They wanted, too,
an appreciation of one another’s faults and virtues.
They were strangers, and every day taught each something about the
other. Gilbert learnt that this quiet girl, whose sad grey eyes had
hinted at tragedy, had a sense of humour, could laugh on little
provocation, and was immensely shrewd in her appraisement of humanity.
She, for her part, had found a force she had not reckoned on, a
vitality and a doggedness of purpose which she had never seen before
their marriage. He could be entertaining, too, in the rare intervals
when they were alone together. He was a traveller, had visited Persia,
Arabia, and the less known countries of Eastern Asia.
She never referred again to the events of that terrible marriage
night. Here, perhaps, her judgment was at fault. She had seen a player
with a face of extraordinary beauty, and had given perhaps too much
attention to this minor circumstance. Somewhere in her husband’s heart
was a secret, what that secret was she could only guess. She guessed
that it was associated in some way with a woman--therein the woman in
her spoke.
She had no feeling of resentment either towards her husband or to the
unknown who had sent a message through the trembling strings of her
violin upon that wedding night.
Only, she told herself, it was “curious.” She wanted to know what it
was all about. She had the healthy curiosity of the young. The
revelation might shock her, might fill her with undying contempt for
the man whose name she bore, but she wanted to know.
It piqued her too, after a while, that he should have any secrets from
her--a strange condition of mind, remembering the remarkable
relationship in which they stood, and yet one quite understandable.
Though they had not achieved the friendly and peculiar relationship of
man and wife, there had grown up between them a friendship which the
girl told herself (and did her best to believe) was of a more enduring
character than that which marriage _qua_ marriage could produce. It
was a comradeship in which much was taken for granted; she took for
granted that he loved her, and entered into the marriage with no other
object. That was a comforting basis for friendship with any woman.
For his part, he took it for granted that she had a soul above
deception, that she was frank even though in her frankness she wounded
him almost to death. He detected in that an unusual respect for
himself, though in his more logical mood he argued she would have
acted as honourably to any man.
She herself wove into the friendship a peculiar sexless variety of
romance--sexless since she thought she saw in it an accomplished ideal
towards which the youth of all ages have aspired without any
conspicuous success.
There is no man or woman in the world who does not think that the
chance in a million may be his or hers; there is no human creature so
diffident that it does not imagine in its favour is created exception
to evident and universal rules.
Plato may have stopped dead in his conduct of other friendships, his
philosophies may have frizzled hopelessly and helplessly, and have
been evaporated to thin vapour before the fire of natural love. A
thousand witnesses may rise to testify to the futility of friendship
in two people of opposite sex, but there always is the “you” and the
“me” in the world, who defies experience, and comes with sublime faith
to show how different will be the result to that which has attended
all previous experiments.
As she told herself, if there had been the slightest spark of love in
her bosom for this young man who had come into her life with some
suddenness, and had gone out in a sense so violently, only to return
in another guise, if there had been the veriest smouldering ember of
the thing called love in her heart, she would have been jealous, just
a little jealous, of the interests which drew him away from her every
night, and often brought him home when the grey dawn was staining the
blue of the East.
She had watched him once from her window, and had wondered vaguely
what he found to do at night.
Was he seeking relaxation from an intolerable position? He never gave
her the impression that it was intolerable. There was comfort in that
thought.
Was there--somebody else?
Here was a question to make her knit her brows, this loveless wife.
Once she found herself, to her intense amazement, on the verge of
tears at the thought. She went through all the stages of doubt and
decision, of anger and contrition, which a young wife more happily
circumstanced might have experienced.
Who was the violin player with the beautiful face? What part had she
taken in Gilbert’s life?
One thing she did know, her husband was gambling on the Stock
Exchange. At first she did not realise that he could be so
commonplace. She had always regarded him as a man to whom vulgar
money-grabbing would be repugnant. He had surrendered his position at
the Foreign Office; he was now engaged in some business which neither
discussed. She thought many things, but until she discovered the
contract note of a broker upon his desk, she had never suspected
success on the Stock Exchange as the goal of his ambition.
This transaction seemed an enormous one to her.
There were tens of thousands of shares detailed upon the note. She
knew very little about the Stock Exchange, except that there had been
mornings when her mother had been unbearable as a result of her
losses. Then it occurred to her, if he were in business--a vague term
which meant anything--she might do something more than sit at home and
direct his servants.
She might help him also in another way. Business men have expedient
dinners, give tactful theatre parties. And many men have succeeded
because they have wives who are wise in their generation.
It was a good thought. She held a grand review of her wardrobe, and
posted the letter which so completely destroyed her mother’s peace of
mind.
Gilbert had been out all the morning, and he came back from the City
looking rather tired.
An exchange of smiles, a little strained and a little hard on one
side, a little wistful and a little sad on the other, had become the
conventional greeting between the two, so too had the inquiry, “Did
you sleep well?” which was the legitimate property of whosoever
thought first of this original question.
They were in the midst of lunch when she asked suddenly--
“Would you like me to give a dinner party?”
He looked up with a start.
“A dinner party!” he said incredulously, then, seeing her face drop,
and realising something of the sacrifice which she might be making, he
added, “I think it is an excellent idea. Whom would you like to
invite?”
“Any friends you have,” she said, “that rather nice man Mr. Frankfort,
and---- Who else?” she asked.
He smiled a little grimly.
“I think that rather nice man Mr. Frankfort about exhausts the sum of
my friends,” he said with a little laugh. “We might ask Warrell.”
“Who is Warrell? Oh, I know,” she said quickly, “he is mother’s
broker.”
He looked at her curiously.
“Your mother’s broker,” he repeated slowly, “is he really?”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?” he evaded.
“Why did you say that so queerly?”
“I did not know that I did,” he said carelessly, “only somehow one
doesn’t associate your mother with a broker. Yet I suppose she finds
an agent necessary in these days. You see, he is my broker too.”
“Who else?” she asked.
“On my side of the family,” he said with mock solemnity, “I can think
of nobody. What about your mother?”
“I could ask one or two nice people,” she went on, ignoring the
suggestion.
“What about your mother?” he said again.
She looked up, her eyes filled with tears.
“Please do not be horrid,” she said. “You know that is impossible.”
“Not at all,” he answered cheerfully. “I made the suggestion in all
good faith; I think it is a good one. After all, there is no reason
why this absurd quarrel should go on. I admit I felt very sore with
her; but then I even felt sore with you!”
He looked at her not unkindly.
“The soreness is gradually wearing away,” he said.
He spoke half to himself, though he looked at the girl. It seemed to
her that he was trying to convince himself of something in which he
did not wholly believe.
“It is extraordinary,” he said, “how little things, little worries,
and petty causes for unhappiness disappear in the face of a really
great trouble.”
“What is your great trouble?” she asked, quick to seize the advantage
which he had given her in that unguarded moment.
“None,” he said. His tone was a little louder than usual, it was
almost defiant. “I am speaking hypothetically.
“I have no trouble save the very obvious troubles of life,” he went
on. “You were a trouble to me for quite a little time, but you are not
any more.”
“I am glad you said that,” she said softly. “I want to be real good
friends with you, Gilbert--I want to be a real good friend to you. I
have made rather a hash of your life, I’m afraid.”
She had risen from the table and stood looking down at him.
He shook his head.
“I do not think you have,” he said, “not the hash that you imagine.
Other circumstances have conspired to disfigure what was a pleasant
outlook. It is unfortunate that our marriage has not proved to be all
that I dreamt it would be, but then dreams are very unstable
foundations to the fabric of life. You would not think that I was a
dreamer, would you?” he said quickly with that ready smile of his,
those eyes that creased into little lines at the corners. “You would
not imagine me as a romancist, though I am afraid I was.”
“You are, you mean,” she corrected.
He made no reply to that.
The question of the dinner came up later, when he was preparing to go
out.
“You would not like to stay and talk it over, I suppose,” she
suggested a little timidly.
He hesitated.
“There is nothing I should like better,” he said, “but”--he looked at
his watch.
She pressed her lips together, and for one moment felt a wave of
unreasoning anger sweeping over her. It was absurd, of course, he
always went out at this time, and there was really no reason why he
should stay in.
“We can discuss it another time,” she said coldly, and left him
without a further word.
He waited until he heard the door close in her room above, and then he
went out with a little smile in which there were tears almost, but in
which there was no merriment.
He left the house at a propitious moment; had he waited another five
minutes he would have met his mother-in-law.
Mrs. Cathcart had made up her mind to “own up” and had come in person
to make the confession. It was a merciful providence, so she told
herself, that had taken Gilbert out of the way; that he had gone out
she discovered before she had been in the house four minutes, and she
discovered it by the very simple process of demanding from Gilbert’s
servant whether his master was at home.
Edith heard of her mother’s arrival without surprise. She supposed
that Mrs. Cathcart had come to hand the necklace to its lawful owner.
She felt some pricking of conscience as she came down the stairs to
meet her mother; had she not been unnecessarily brusque in her demand!
She was a tender soul, and had a proper and natural affection for the
elder woman. The fear that she might have hurt her feelings, and that
that hurt might be expressed at the interview gave her a little qualm
as she opened the drawing-room door.
Mrs. Cathcart was coolness itself. You might have thought that never a
scene had occurred between these two women which could be remembered
with unkindliness. No reference was made to the past, and Edith was
glad.
It was not her desire that she should live on bad terms with her
mother. She understood her too well, which was unfortunate for both,
and it would be all the happier for them if they could maintain some
pretence of friendship.
Mrs. Cathcart came straight to the point.
“I suppose you know why I have called,” she said, after the first
exchange.
“I suppose you have brought the necklace,” said the girl with a smile.
“You do not think I am horrid to ask for it, but I feel I ought to do
something for Gilbert.”
“I think you might have chosen another subject for your first letter,”
said the elder woman grimly, “but still----”
Edith made no reply. It was useless to argue with her mother. Mrs.
Cathcart had a quality which is by no means rare in the total of human
possessions, the quality of putting other people in the wrong.
“I am more sorry,” Mrs. Cathcart resumed, “because I am not in a
position to give you your necklace.”
The girl stared at her mother in wonder.
“Why! Whatever do you mean, mother?” she asked.
Mrs. Cathcart carefully avoided her eyes.
“I have had losses on the Stock Exchange,” she said. “I suppose you
know that your father left us just sufficient to starve on, and
whatever luxury and whatever comfort you have had has been due to my
own individual efforts? I have lost a lot of money over Canadian
Pacifics,” she said bluntly.
“Well?” asked the girl, wondering what was coming next, and fearing
the worst.
“I made a loss of seven hundred pounds with a firm of stockbrokers,”
Mrs. Cathcart continued, “and I deposited your necklace with the firm
as security.” The girl gasped. “I intended, of course, redeeming it,
but an unfortunate thing happened--the safe was burgled and the
necklace was stolen.”
Edith Standerton stared at the other.
The question of the necklace did not greatly worry her, yet she
realised now that she had depended rather more upon it than she had
thought. It was a little nest-egg against a bad time, which, if
Gilbert spoke the truth, might come at any moment.
“It cannot be helped,” she said.
She did not criticise her mother or offer any opinion upon the
impropriety of offering as security for debt articles which are the
property of somebody else.
Such criticism would have been wasted, and the effort would have been
entirely superfluous.
“Well,” asked Mrs. Cathcart, “what have you got to say?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
“What can I say, mother? The thing is lost, and there is an end to it.
Do the firm offer any compensation?”
She asked the question innocently: it occurred to her as a wandering
thought that possibly something might be saved from the wreck.
Mrs. Cathcart shot a swift glance at her.
Had that infernal Warrell been communicating with her? She knew that
Warrell was a friend of Edith’s husband. It would be iniquitous of him
if he had.
“Some compensation was offered,” she answered carelessly, “quite
inadequate; the matter is not settled yet, but I will let you know how
it develops.”
“What compensation do they offer?” asked Edith.
Mrs. Cathcart hesitated.
“A thousand pounds,” she said reluctantly.
“A thousand pounds!”
The girl was startled, she had no idea the necklace was of that value.
“That means, of course,” Mrs. Cathcart hastened to explain, “seven
hundred pounds out of my pocket and three hundred pounds from the
broker.”
The girl smiled inwardly. “Seven hundred pounds from my pocket” meant,
“if you ask for the full value you will rob me.”
“And there is three hundred pounds due. I think I had better have
that.”
“Wait a little,” said Mrs. Cathcart, “they may recover the necklace,
anyway; they want me to give a description of it. What do you think?”
The girl shook her head.
“I do not think I should like that,” she said quietly. “Questions
might be asked, and I should not like people to know either that the
necklace was mine, or that my mother had deposited it as security
against her debts.”
Here was the new Edith with a vengeance. Mrs. Cathcart stared at her.
“Edith,” she said severely, “that sounds a little impertinent.”
“I dare say it does, mother,” said the girl, “but what am I to do?
What am I to say? There are the facts fairly apparent to you and to
me; the necklace is stolen, and it may possibly never be recovered,
and I am not going to expose either my loss or your weakness on the
remote possibility of getting back an article of jewellery which
probably by this time is in the melting-pot and the stones dispersed.”
“You know a great deal about jewels and jewel-robbers,” said her
mother with a little sneer. “Has Gilbert been enlarging your
education?”
“Curiously enough, he has,” said her daughter calmly; “we discuss many
queer things.”
“You must have very pleasant evenings,” said the elder woman dryly.
She rose to go, looking at her watch. “I am sorry I cannot stay,” she
said, “but I am dining with some people. I suppose you would not like
to come along? It is quite an informal affair; as a matter of fact,
the invitation included you.”
“And Gilbert?” asked the girl.
The woman smiled.
“No, it did not exactly include Gilbert,” she said. “I have made it
pretty clear that invitations to me are acceptable only so long as the
party does not include your husband.”
The girl drew herself up stiffly, and the elder woman saw a storm
gathering in her eyes.
“I do not quite understand you. Do you mean that you have gone round
London talking unkindly about my husband?”
“Of course I have,” said Mrs. Cathcart virtuously. “I do not know
about having gone round London, but I have told those people who are
intimate friends of mine, and who are naturally interested in my
affairs.”
“You have no right to speak,” said the girl angrily, “it is
disgraceful of you. You have made your mistake, and you must abide by
the consequence. I also have made a mistake, and I cheerfully accept
my lot. If it hurts you that I am married to a man who despises me,
how much more do you think it hurts me?”
Mrs. Cathcart laughed.
“I assure you,” she smiled, “that though many thoughts disturb my
nights, the thought that your husband has no particular love for you
is not one of them; what does wake me up with a horrid feeling is the
knowledge that so far from being the rich man I thought he was, he is
practically penniless. What madness induced him to give up his work at
the Foreign Office?”
“You had better ask him,” said the girl with malice, “he will be in in
a few moments.”
It needed only this to hasten Mrs. Cathcart’s departure, and Edith was
left alone.
* * * *
Edith dined alone that night.
At first she had welcomed with a sense of infinite relief these
solitary dinners. She was a woman of considerable intelligence, and
she had faced the future without illusion.
She realised that there might come a time when she and Gilbert would
live together in perfect harmony, though without the essential
sympathies which husband and wife should mutually possess. She was
willing to undergo the years of probation, and it made it all the
easier for her if business or pleasure kept them apart during the
embarrassing hours between dinner and bed-time.
But to-night, for the first time, she was lonely.
She felt the need of him, the desire for his society, the cheer and
the vitality of him.
There were moments when he was bright and happy and flippant, as she
had known him at his best. There were other moments too, terrible and
depressing moments, when she never saw him, when he shut himself in
his study and she only caught a glimpse of his face by accident. She
went through her dinner alternately reading and thinking.
A book lay upon the table by her side, but she did not turn one page.
The maid was clearing the entrée when Edith Standerton looked up with
a start.
“What is it?” she said.
“What, madam?” asked the girl.
Outside the window Edith could hear the sound of music, a gentle, soft
cadence of sound, a tiny wail of melodious tragedy.
She rose from the table, walked across to the window and pulled aside
the blinds. Outside a girl was playing a violin. In the light which a
street lamp afforded Edith recognised the player of the “Melody in F.”
CHAPTER IX.
EDITH MEETS THE PLAYER
Edith turned to her waiting maid.
“Go out and bring the girl in at once,” she said quietly.
“Which girl, madam?” asked the startled servant.
“The girl who is playing,” said Edith. “Hurry please, before she
goes.”
She was filled with sudden determination to unravel this mystery. She
might be acting disloyally to her husband, but she adjusted any fear
she may have had on the score with the thought that she might also be
helping him. The maid returned in a few minutes and ushered in a girl.
Yes, it was the girl she had seen on her wedding night. She stood now,
framed in the doorway, watching her hostess with frank curiosity.
“Won’t you come in?” said Edith. “Have you had any dinner?”
“Thank you very much,” said the girl, “we do not take dinner, but I
had a very good tea.”
“Will you sit down for a little while?”
With a graceful inclination of her head the girl accepted the
invitation.
Her voice was free from the foreign accent which Edith had expected.
She was indubitably English, and there was a refinement in her tone
which Edith had not expected to meet.
“I suppose you wonder why I have sent for you?” asked Edith
Standerton.
The girl showed two rows of white, even teeth in a smile.
“When people send for me,” she said demurely, “it is either to pay me
for my music, or to bribe me to desist!”
There was frank merriment in her eyes, her smile lit up the face and
changed its whole aspect.
“I am doing both,” said Edith, “and I also want to ask you something.
Do you know my husband?”
“Mr. Standerton,” said the girl, and nodded. “Yes, I have seen him,
and I have played to him.”
“Do you remember a night in June,” asked Edith, her heart beating
faster at the memory, “when you came under this window and
played”--she hesitated--“a certain tune?”
The girl nodded.
“Why, yes,” she said in surprise, “of course I remember that night of
all nights.”
“Why of all nights?” asked Edith quickly.
“Well, you see as a rule my grandfather plays for Mr. Standerton, and
that night he was ill. He caught a bad chill on Derby Day,--we were
wet through by the storm, for we were playing at Epsom--and I had to
come here and deputise for him. I did not want to go out a bit that
night,” she confessed with a bitter laugh, “and I hate the tune; but
it was all so mysterious and so romantic.”
“Just tell me what was ‘mysterious’ and what was ‘romantic,’” said
Edith.
The coffee came in at that moment, and she poured a cup for her
visitor.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“May Wing,” said the girl.
“Now tell me, May, all you know,” said Edith, as she passed the
coffee, “and please believe it is not out of curiosity that I ask
you.”
“I will tell you everything,” said the girl, nodding. “I remember that
day particularly because I had been to the Academy of Music to take my
lesson--you would not think we could afford that, but granny
absolutely insists upon it. I got back home rather tired. Grandfather
was lying down on the couch. We live at Hoxton. He seemed a little
troubled. ‘May,’ he said, ‘I want you to do something for me
to-night.’ Of course, I was quite willing and happy to do it.”
The girl stopped suddenly.
“Why, how extraordinary,” she said, “I believe I have got proof in my
pocket of all that I say.”
She had hanging from her waist a little bag of the same material as
her dress, and this she opened and searched inside.
She brought out an envelope.
“I will not show you this yet,” she said, “but I will tell you what
happened. Grandfather, as I was saying, was very troubled, and he
asked me if I would do something for him, knowing of course that I
would.
“‘I have had a letter which I cannot make head or tail of,’ he said,
and he showed me this letter.”
The girl held out the envelope.
Edith took it and removed the card inside.
“Why, this is my husband’s writing!” she cried.
“Yes,” nodded the girl.
It bore the postmark of Doncaster, and the letter was brief. It was
addressed to the old musician, and ran:--
“Enclosed you will find a postal order for one pound. On receipt of
this go to the house of Mr. Standerton between the hours of half-past
seven and eight o’clock and play Rubenstein’s ‘Melody in F.’ Ascertain
if he is at home, and if he is not return the next night and play the
same tune at the same hour.”
That was all.
“I cannot understand it,” said Edith, puzzled. “What does it mean?”
The girl musician smiled.
“I should like to know what it meant too. You see, I am as curious as
you, and think it is a failing which all women share.”
“And you do not know why this was sent?”
“No.”
“Or what is its meaning?”
Again the girl shook her head.
Edith looked at the envelope and examined the postmark.
It was dated May the twenty-fourth.
“May the twenty-fourth,” she repeated to herself. “Just wait one
moment,” she said, and ran upstairs to her bedroom.
Feverishly she unlocked her bureau and took out the red-covered diary
in which she had inscribed the little events of her life in Portland
Square. She turned to May the twenty-fourth. There were only two
entries. The first had to do with the arrival of a new dress but the
second was very emphatic:--
“G. S. came at seven o’clock and stayed to dinner. Was very
absent-minded and worried apparently. He left at ten. Had a depressing
evening.”
She looked at the envelope again.
“Doncaster, 7.30,” it said.
So the letter had been posted a hundred and eighty miles away half an
hour after he had arrived in Portland Square.
She went back to the dining-room bewildered, but she controlled her
agitation in the presence of the girl.
“I must really patronise one of the arts,” she smiled.
She took a half-sovereign from her purse and handed it to May.
“Oh, really,” protested the little musician.
“No, take it, please. You have given me a great deal to think about.
Has Mr. Standerton ever referred to this incident since?”
“Never,” said the girl. “I have never seen him since except once when
I was on the top of an omnibus.”
A few minutes later the girl left.
Here was food for imagination, sufficient to occupy her mind, thought
Edith.
“What did it mean?” she asked, “what mystery was behind all this?”
Now that she recalled the circumstances, she remembered that Gilbert
had been terribly distrait that night; he was nervous, she had noticed
his hand shaking, and had remarked to her mother upon his
extraordinary absent-mindedness.
And if he had expected the musician to call, and if he himself had
specified what tune should be played, why had its playing produced so
terrible an effect upon him? He was no _poseur_.
There was nothing theatrical in his temperament.
He was a musician, and loved music as he loved nothing else in the
world save her!
She thought of that reservation with some tenderness.
He had loved her then, whatever might be his feelings now, and the
love of a strong man does not easily evaporate, nor is it destroyed at
a word.
Since their marriage his piano had not been opened. He had been a
subscriber to almost every musical event in London, yet he had not
attended a single concert, not once visited the opera.
With the playing of the “Melody in F” it seemed to her there had ended
one precious period of his life.
She had suggested once that they should go to a concert which all
musical London was attending.
“Perhaps you would like to go,” he had suggested briefly. “I am afraid
I shall be rather busy that night.” This, after he had told her not
once, but a score of times that music expressed to him every message
and every emotion in language clearer than the printed word.
What did it mean? She was seized with a sudden energy, a sudden desire
for knowledge--she wanted to share a greater portion of his life. What
connection had this melody with the sudden change that had come to
him? What association had it with the adoption of this strenuous life
of his lately? What had it to do with his resignation from the Foreign
Office and from his clubs?
She was certain there must be some connection, and she was determined
to discover what.
As she was in the dark she could not help him. She knew instinctively
that to ask him would be of little use. He was of the type who
preferred to play a lone hand.
She was his wife, she owed him something. She had brought unhappiness
into his life, and she could do no less than strive to help him. She
would want money.
She sat down and wrote a little note to her mother. She would take the
three hundred pounds which were due from the broker; she even went so
far as to hint that if this matter were not promptly settled by her
parent she herself would see Mr. Warrell and conclude negotiations.
She had read in the morning paper the advertisement of a private
detective agency, and for a while she was inclined to engage a man.
But what special qualifications did private detectives have that she
herself did not possess? It required no special training to use one’s
brains and to exercise one’s logical faculties.
She had found a mission in life--the solution of this mystery which
surrounded her husband like a cloud. She found herself feeling
cheerful at the prospect of the work to which she had set her hand.
“You should find yourself an occupation,” Gilbert had said in his
hesitating fashion.
She smiled, and wondered exactly what he would think if he knew the
occupation she had found.
* * * *
The little house in Hoxton which sheltered May and her grandfather was
in a respectable little street in the main inhabited by the members of
the artisan class. Small and humble as the dwelling was it was
furnished in perfect taste. The furniture was old in the more valuable
and more attractive sense of the word.
Old man Wing propped up in his arm-chair sat by a small fire in the
room which served as kitchen and dining-room. May was busy with her
sewing.
“My dear,” said the old man in his gentle voice. “I do not think you
had better go out again to-night.”
“Why not, grandpa?” asked the girl without looking up from her work.
“Well, it is probably selfishness on my part,” he said, “but somehow I
do not want to be left alone. I am expecting a visitor.”
“A visitor!”
Visitors were unusual at No. 9 Pexton Street, Hoxton. The only visitor
they knew was the rent man who called with monotonous regularity every
Monday morning.
“Yes,” said her grandfather hesitatingly, “I think you remember the
gentleman; you saw him some time ago.”
“Not Mr. Standerton?”
The old man shook his head.
“No, not Mr. Standerton,” he said, “but you will recall how at Epsom a
rather nice man helped you out of a crowd after a race?”
“I remember,” she said.
“His name is Wallis,” said the old man, “and I met him by accident
to-day when I was shopping.”
“Wallis,” she repeated.
Old Wing was silent for a while, then he asked--
“Do you think, my dear, we could take a lodger?”
“Oh, no,” protested the girl. “Please not!”
“I find the rent rather heavy,” said her grandfather, shaking his
head, “and this Mr. Wallis is a quiet sort of person and not likely to
give us any trouble.”
Still the girl was not satisfied.
“I would rather we didn’t,” she said. “I am quite sure we can earn
enough to keep the house going without that kind of assistance.
Lodgers are nuisances. I do not suppose Mrs. Gamage would like it.”
Mrs. Gamage was the faded neighbour who came in every morning to help
straighten the house.
The girl saw the old man’s face fall and went round to him, putting
her arm around his shoulder.
“Do not bother, grandpa dear,” she said, “if you want a lodger you
shall have one. I think it would be rather nice to have somebody in
the house who could talk to you when I am out.”
There was a knock at the door.
“That must be our visitor,” she said, and went to open it. She
recognised the man who stood in the doorway.
“May I come in?” he asked. “I wanted to see your grandfather on a
matter of business. I suppose you are Miss Wing.”
She nodded.
“Come in,” she said, and led the way to the kitchen.
“I will not keep you very long,” said Mr. Wallis. “No, thank you, I
will stand while I am here. I want to find a quiet lodging for a
friend of mine. At least,” he went on, “he is a man in whom I am
rather interested, a very quiet sobersides individual who will be out
most of the day, and possibly out most of the night too.” He smiled.
“He is a----” He hesitated. “He is a taxi-cab driver, to be exact,” he
said, “though he does not want this fact to be well known because he
has seen--er--better days.”
“We have only a very small room we can give your friend,” said May,
“perhaps you would like to see it.”
She took him up to the spare bedroom which they had used on very rare
occasions for the accommodation of the few visitors who had been their
guests. The room was neat and clean, and George Wallis nodded
approvingly.
“I should like nothing better than this for myself,” he said.
He himself suggested a higher price than she asked, and insisted upon
paying a month in advance.
“I have told the man to call, he ought to be here by now; if you do
not mind, I will wait for him.”
It was not a long wait, for in a few minutes there arrived the new
lodger. He was a burly man with a heavy black beard, clipped short,
and the fact that he was somewhat taciturn and short of speech rather
enhanced his value as a lodger than otherwise.
Wallis took farewell of the old man and his grand-daughter, and
accompanied by the man, whose name was given somewhat unpromisingly as
Smith, he walked to the end of the street.
He had something to say, and that something was important.
“I have got you this place, Smithy,” he said, as they walked slowly
towards Hoxton High Street, “because it is quiet and fairly safe. The
people are respected, and nobody will bother you.”
“They are not likely to worry me in any way, are they?” said the man
addressed as Smith.
“Not at present,” replied the other, “but I do not know exactly how
things are going to develop. I am worried.”
“What are you worried about?”
George Wallis laughed a little helplessly.
“Why do you ask such stupid questions?” he said with good-natured
irritation. “Don’t you realise what has happened? Somebody knows our
game.”
“Well, why not drop it?” asked the other quietly.
“How can we drop it? My dear good chap, though in twelve months we
have accumulated a store of movable property sufficiently valuable to
enable us all to retire upon, there is not one of us who is willing at
this moment to cut out--it would take us twelve months to get rid of
the loot,” he said thoughtfully.
“I do not exactly know where it is,” said Smith with a little smile.
“Nobody knows that but me,” replied Wallis with a little frown, “that
is the worrying part of it. I feel the whole responsibility upon me.
Smithy, we are being really watched.”
The other smiled.
“That isn’t unusual,” he said. But Wallis was very serious.
“Whom do you suspect?” he asked.
The other did not answer for a moment.
“I do not suspect, I know,” he said. “A few months ago, when Calli and
I were doing a job in Hatton Garden we were interrupted by the arrival
of a mysterious gentleman, who watched me open the safe and
disappeared immediately afterwards. At that time he did not seem to be
particularly hostile or have any ulterior motive in view. Now, for
some reason which is best known to himself, he is working against us.
That is the man we have got to find.”
“But how?”
“Put an advertisement in the paper,” said the other sarcastically:
“Will the gentleman who dogs Mr. Wallis kindly reveal his identity,
and no further action will be taken.”
“But seriously!” said the other.
“We have got to discover who he is, there must be some way of trapping
him; but the only thing to do, and I must do it for my own protection,
is to get you all together and share out. We had better meet.”
Smith nodded.
“When?”
“To-night,” said Wallis. “Meet me at the.…”
He mentioned the name of a restaurant near Regent Street.
It was, curiously enough, the very restaurant where Gilbert Standerton
invariably dined alone.
CHAPTER X.
THE NECKLACE
Mrs. Cathcart was considerably surprised to receive an invitation to
the dinner. She had that morning sent her daughter a cheque for three
hundred pounds which she had received from her broker, but as their
letters had crossed, one event had no connection with the other.
She did not immediately decide to accept the invitation, she was not
sure as to the terms on which she desired to remain with her new
son-in-law.
She was, however (whatever might be her faults), a good strategist,
and there was nothing to be gained by declining the invitation, and
there might be some advantage in accepting.
She was surprised to meet Mr. Warrell, surprised and a little
embarrassed; but now that her daughter knew everything there was no
reason in the world why she should feel uncomfortable.
She took him in charge, as was her wont, from the moment she met him
in the little drawing-room at the St. John’s Wood house.
It was a pleasant dinner. Gilbert made a perfect host, he seemed to
have revived within himself something of the old gay spirit. Warrell,
remembering all that Mrs. Cathcart had told him, was on the _qui vive_
to discover some evidence of dissension between husband and wife, the
more anxious, perhaps, since he was before everything a professional
man, to find justification for Mrs. Cathcart’s suggestion, that all
was not going well with Gilbert.
Leslie Frankfort, a member of the party, had been questioned by his
partner without the elder man eliciting any information which might
help to dispel the doubt that was in Warrell’s mind.
Leslie Frankfort, that cheerful youth, was as much in the dark as his
partner. It gave him some satisfaction to discover that at any rate
there was no immediate prospect of ruin in his friend’s _ménage_.
The dinner was perfect, the food rare and chosen by an epicure, which
indeed it was, as Gilbert had assisted his wife to prepare the menu.
The talk drifted idly, as talk does, at such a dinner party, around
the topics which men and women were discussing at a thousand other
dinner tables in England, and in the natural course of events it
turned upon the startling series of burglaries that had been committed
recently in London. That the talk should take this drift was more
natural, perhaps, because Mrs. Cathcart had very boldly introduced the
subject with reference to the burglary at Warrell’s.
“No, indeed,” said Mr. Warrell, shaking his head, “I regret to say we
have no clue. The police have the matter in hand, but I’m afraid we
shall never find the man, or men, who perpetrated the crime.”
“I don’t suppose they would be of much service to you if you found
them,” said Gilbert quietly.
“I don’t know,” demurred the other. “We might possibly get the jewels
back.”
Gilbert Standerton laughed, but stopped in the middle of it.
“Jewels?” he said.
“Don’t you remember, Gilbert?” Leslie broke in. “I told you that we
had a necklace in the safe, the property of a client, one of those
gambling ladies who patronise us.”
A warning glance from his partner arrested him. The gambling lady
herself was rather red, and shot a malevolent glance at the indiscreet
young man.
“The necklace was mine,” she said acidly.
“Oh!” said Leslie, and found the conversation of no great interest to
him.
Gilbert did not smile at his friend’s embarrassment.
“A necklace,” he repeated, “how curious--yours?”
“Mine,” repeated Mrs. Cathcart. “I placed it with Warrell’s for
security. Precious fine security it proved,” she added.
Warrell was all apologies. He was embarrassed for more reasons than
one. He was very annoyed indeed with the indiscreet youth who owed his
preponderant interest in the firm the more by reason of his dead
father’s shares in the business than to any extent to his intelligence
or his usefulness.
“Exactly what kind of necklace was it?” continued Gilbert. “I did not
see a description.”
“No description was given,” said Mr. Warrell, coming to the relief of
his client, whom he knew from infallible signs was fast losing her
temper.
“We wished to keep the matter quiet, so that it should not get into
the papers.”
Edith tactfully turned the conversation, and in a few minutes they
were deep in the discussion of a question which has never failed to
excite great interest--the abstract problem of the church.
Mrs. Cathcart, it may be remarked in passing, was a churchwoman of
some standing, a leader amongst a certain set, and an extreme
ritualist. Add to this element the broad Nonconformity of Mr. Warrell,
the frank scepticism of Leslie, and there were all the ingredients for
an argument, which in less refined circles might develop to a
sanguinary conclusion.
Edith at least was relieved, however drastic the remedy might be, and
was quite prepared to disestablish the Church of Wales, or if
necessary the Church of England, rather than see the folly of her
mother exposed.
Despite argument, dogmatism of Mrs. Cathcart, philippic of Leslie, and
the good-natured tolerance of Mr. Warrell, this latter a most trying
attitude to combat, the dinner ended pleasantly, and they adjourned to
the little drawing-room upstairs.
“I’m afraid I shall have to leave you,” said Gilbert.
It was nearly ten o’clock, and he had already warned his wife of an
engagement he had made for a later hour.
“I believe old Gilbert is a journalist in these days,” said Leslie. “I
saw you the other night in Fleet Street, didn’t I?”
“No,” replied Gilbert shortly.
“Then it must have been your double,” said the other.
Edith had not followed the party upstairs. Just before dinner Gilbert
had asked her, with some hesitation, to make him up a packet of
sandwiches.
“I may be out the greater part of the night,” he said. “A man wants me
to motor down to Brighton to meet somebody.”
“Will you be out all night?” she had asked, a little alarmed.
He shook his head.
“No, I shall be back by four,” he said.
She might have thought it was an unusual hour to meet people, but she
made no comment.
As her little party had gone upstairs she had remembered the
sandwiches, and went down into the kitchen to see if cook had cut and
laid them ready.
She wrapped them up for him and packed them into a little flat
sandwich case she had, and then made her way back to the hall.
His coat was hanging on a rack, and she had to slip them into the
pocket. There was a newspaper in the way; she pulled it out, and there
was something else, something loose and uneven.
She smiled at his untidiness, and put in her hand to remove the
debris.
Her face changed.
What was it?
Her fingers closed round the object in the bottom of the pocket, and
she drew it out.
There in the palm of her hand, clearly revealed by the electric lamp
above her head, shone her diamond necklace!
For a moment the little hall swayed, but she steadied herself with an
effort.
Her necklace!
There was no doubt--she turned it over with trembling fingers.
How had he got it? Where did it come from?
A thought had struck her, but it was too horrible for her to give it
expression.
Gilbert a burglar! It was absurd. She tried to smile, but failed.
Almost every night he had been out, every night in the week in which
this burglary had been committed.
She heard a footstep on the stairs, and thrust the necklace into the
bosom of her dress.
It was Gilbert. He did not notice her face, then--
“Gilbert,” she said, and something in her voice warned him.
He turned, peering down at her.
“What is wrong?” he asked.
“Will you come into the dining-room for a moment?” she said.
Her voice sounded far away to her.
She felt it was not she who was speaking, but some third person.
He opened the door of the dining-room and walked in. The table was
spread with the debris of the dinner which had just been concluded.
The rosy glow of the overhead lamp fell upon a pretty chaos of flowers
and silver and glass.
He closed the door behind him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“This,” she replied quietly, and drew the necklace from her dress.
He looked at it. Not a muscle of his face moved.
“That?” he said. “Well, what is that?”
“My necklace!”
“Your necklace,” he repeated dully. “Is that the necklace that your
mother lost?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“How very curious.”
He reached out his hand and took it from her and examined the diamond
pendant.
“And that is your necklace,” he said. “Well, that is a remarkable
coincidence.”
“Where did you get it?” she asked.
He did not make any reply. He was looking at her with a stony stare in
which there was neither expression nor encouragement for speculation.
“Where did I get it?” he repeated calmly. “Who told you that I’d got
it?”
“I found it in your pocket,” she said breathlessly. “Oh, Gilbert,
there is no use denying that you had it there or you knew it was
there. Where did you get it?”
Another pause, then came the answer--
“I found it.”
It was lame and unconvincing, and he knew it.
She repeated the question.
“I am not prepared to tell you,” he said calmly. “You think I stole
it, I suppose? You probably imagine that I am a burglar?”
He smiled, but the lips that curved in laughter were hard.
“I can see that in your eyes,” he went on. “You explain my absence
from home, my retirement from the Foreign Office, by the fact that I
have taken up a more lucrative profession.”
He laughed aloud.
“Well, I have,” he said. “It is not exactly burglary. I assure you,”
he went on with mock solemnity, “that I have never burgled a safe in
my life. I give you my word of honour that I have never stolen a
single article of any----” He stopped himself--he might say too much.
But Edith grasped at the straw he offered her.
“Oh, you do mean that, don’t you?” she said eagerly, and laid her two
hands on his breast. “You really mean it? I know it is stupid of me,
foolish and horribly disloyal--common of me, anything you like, to
suspect you of so awful a thing, but it did seem--it did, didn’t it?”
“It did,” he agreed gravely.
“Won’t you tell me how it came into your possession?” she pleaded.
“I tell you I found it--that is true. I had no intention----” He
stopped again. “It was--I picked it up in the road, in a country
lane.”
“But weren’t you awfully surprised to find it, and didn’t you tell the
police?”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I was not surprised, and I did not tell the police. I
intended restoring it, because, after all, jewels are of no value to
me, are they?”
“I don’t understand you, Gilbert.” She shook her head, a little
bewildered. “Nothing is of any use except what belongs to you, is it?”
“That depends,” he said calmly. “But in this particular case I assure
you that I brought this home to-night with the intention of putting it
into a small box and addressing it to the Chief Commissioner of
Police. You may believe that or not. That is why I thought it so
extraordinary when you were talking at dinner that your mother should
have lost a necklace, and that I should have found one.”
They stood looking at one another, he weighing the necklace on the
palm of his hand, tossing it up and down mechanically.
“What are we going to do with it now?” she asked. She was in a
quandary. “I hardly know how to advise.” She hesitated. “Suppose you
carry out your present intention and send it to the police.
“Oh!” she remembered with a little move of dismay, “I have practically
stolen three hundred pounds.”
“Three hundred pounds!”
He looked at the jewel.
“It’s worth more than three hundred pounds.”
In a few words she explained how the jewel came to be lost, and how it
came to be deposited in the hands of Warrell’s.
“I’m glad to hear that your mother is the culprit. I was afraid you’d
been gambling.”
“Would that worry you?” she asked quickly.
“A little,” he said; “it’s enough for one member of a family to
gamble.”
“Do you gamble very much, Gilbert?” she asked seriously.
“A little,” he said.
“Not a little,” she corrected. “Stock Exchange business is gambling.”
“I am trying to make money for you,” he said brusquely.
It was the most brutal thing he had said to her in her short period of
married life, and he saw he had hurt her.
“I am sorry,” he said gently. “I know I am a brute, but I did not mean
to hurt you. I was just protesting in my heart against the unfairness
of things. Will you take this, or shall I?”
“I will take it,” she said. “But won’t you tell the police where you
found it? Possibly they might find the proceeds of other robberies
near by.”
“I think not,” he replied with a little smile. “I have no desire to
incur the anger of this particular gang. I am satisfied in my mind
that it is one of the most powerful and one of the most unscrupulous
in existence. It is nearly half-past ten,” he said; “I must fly.”
He held out his hand, and she took it. She held it for a moment longer
than was her wont.
“Good-bye,” she said. “Good luck, whatever your business may be.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She went slowly back to her guests. It did not make the position any
easier to understand. She believed her husband, and yet there was a
certain reservation in what he had told her, a reservation which said
as plainly as his guarded words could tell that there was much more he
could have said had he been inclined.
She did not doubt his word when he told her that he had never stolen
from--from whom was he going to say? She was more determined than ever
to solve this mystery, and after her guests had gone she was busily
engaged in writing letters. She was hardly in bed that night before
she heard his foot on the stairs and listened.
He knocked at her door as he passed.
“Good-night,” he said.
“Good-night,” she replied.
She heard his door close gently, and she waited for half an hour until
she heard the click of his electric switch which told her that he was
in bed, and that his light was extinguished.
Then she stole softly out of bed, wrapped her dressing gown round her,
and went softly down the stairs. Perhaps his coat was hanging in the
hall.
It was a wild, fantastic idea of hers that he might possibly have
brought some further evidence that would help her in her search for
the truth, but the pockets were empty.
She felt something wet upon the sleeve, and gathered that it was
raining. She went back to her room, closed the door noiselessly, and
went to the window to look out into the street. It was a fine morning,
and the streets were dry. She saw her hands. They were smeared with
blood!
She ran down the stairs again and turned on the light in the hall.
Yes, there it was on his sleeve. There were little drops of blood on
the stair carpet. She could trace him all the way up the stairs by
this. She went straight to his room and knocked.
He answered instantly.
“Who is that?”
“It is I. I want to see you.”
“I am rather tired,” he said.
“Please let me in. I want to see you.”
She tried the door, but it was locked. Then she heard the bed creak as
he moved. An instant later the bolt was slipped, and the light shone
through the fanlight over the door.
He was almost fully dressed, she observed.
“What is the matter with your arm?” she asked.
It was carefully bandaged.
“I hurt it. It is nothing very much.”
“How did you hurt it?” she asked impatiently.
She was nearing the end of her resources. She wanted him to say that
it had happened in a taxi-cab smash or one of the street accidents to
which city dwellers are liable, but he did not explain.
She asked to see the wound. He was unwilling, but she insisted. At
last he unwrapped the bandage, and showed an ugly little gash on the
forearm. It was too rough to be the clean-cut wound of a knife or of
broken glass.
There was a second wound about the size of a sixpence near the elbow.
“That looks like a bullet wound,” she said, and pointed. “It has
glanced along your arm, and has caught you again near the elbow.”
He did not speak.
She procured warm water from the bathroom and bathed it, found a cool
emollient in her room and dressed it as well as she could.
She did not again refer to the circumstances under which the injury
had been sustained. This was not the time nor the place to discuss
that.
“There is an excellent nurse spoilt in you,” he said when she had
finished.
“I am afraid there is an excellent man spoilt in you,” she answered in
a low voice, “and I am rather inclined to think that I have done the
spoiling.”
“Please get that out of your head altogether,” he said almost roughly.
“A man is what he makes himself: you know the tag--the evil you do by
two and two you answer for one by one; and even if you had any part in
the influencing of my life for evil, I am firstly and lastly
responsible.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said she.
She had made him a little sling in which to rest his arm.
“You married me because you loved me, because you gave to me all that
a right-thinking woman would hold precious and sacred and because you
expected me to give something in return. I have given you nothing. I
humiliated you at the very outset by telling you why I had married
you. You have the dubious satisfaction of knowing that I bear your
name. You have, perhaps, half a suspicion that you live with one who
is everlastingly critical of your actions and your intentions. Have I
no responsibilities?”
There was a long silence, then she said--
“Whatever you wish me to do I will always do.”
“I wish you to be happy, that is all,” he replied.
His voice was of the same hard, metallic tone which she had noted
before.
She flushed a little. It had been an effort for her to say what she
had, and he had rebuffed her. He was within his rights, she thought.
She left him, and did not see him till the morning, when they met at
breakfast. They exchanged a few words of greeting, and both turned
their attention to their newspapers. Edith read hers in silence, read
the one column which meant so much to her from end to end twice, then
she laid the paper down.
“I see,” she said, “that our burglars rifled the Bank of the Northern
Provinces last night.”
“So I read,” he said, without raising his eyes from his paper.
“And that one of them was shot by the armed guard of the bank.”
“I’ve also seen that,” said her husband.
“Shot,” she repeated, and looked at his bandaged arm.
He nodded.
“I think my paper is a later edition than yours,” he said gently. “The
man that was shot was killed. They found his body in a taxi-cab. His
name is not given, but I happen to know that it was a very pleasant
florid gentleman named Persh. Poor fellow,” he mused, “it was poetic
justice.”
“Why?” she asked.
“He did this,” said Gilbert Standerton, and pointed to his arm with a
grim smile.
CHAPTER XI.
THE FOURTH MAN
On the night of Gilbert Standerton’s little dinner party the
black-bearded taxi driver, who had called at the house off Charing
Cross Road for instructions, came to the door of No. 43, and was duly
observed by the detective on duty. He went into the house, was absent
five minutes, and came out again, driving off without a fare.
Ten minutes later, at a signal from the detective, the house was
visited by three C.I.D. men from Scotland Yard, and the mystery of the
taxi-cab driver was cleared up for ever.
For, instead of George Wallis, they discovered sitting at his ease in
the drawing-room upstairs, and reading a novel with evident relish,
that same black-bearded chauffeur.
“It is very simple,” said Inspector Goldberg, “the driver comes up and
George Wallis is waiting inside made up exactly like him. The moment
he enters the door and closes it Wallis opens it, and steps out on to
the car and drives off. You people watching thought it was the same
driver returned.”
He looked at his prisoner.
“Well, what are you going to do?” asked the bearded man.
“I am afraid there is nothing we can do with you,” said Goldberg
regretfully. “Have you got a licence?”
“You bet your life I have,” said the driver cheerfully, and produced
it.
“I can take you for consorting with criminals.”
“A difficult charge to prove,” said the bearded one, “more difficult
to get a conviction on, and possibly it would absolutely spoil your
chance of bagging George in the end.”
“That is true,” said Goldberg; “anyway, I’m going to look for your
taxi-cab. I can at least pull George in for driving without a
licence.”
The man shook his head.
“I am sorry to disappoint you,” he said with mock regret, “but George
has a licence too.”
“The devil he has,” said the baffled inspector.
“Funny, isn’t it,” said the bearded man. “George is awfully thorough.”
“Come now, Smith,” said the detective genially, “what is the game? How
deep in this are you?”
“In what?” asked the puzzled man.
Goldberg gave him up for a bad job. He knew that Wallis had chosen his
associates with considerable care.
“Anyway, I will go after George,” he said. “You are probably putting
up a little bluff on me about the licence. Once I get him inside the
jug there are lots of little things I might be able to discover.”
“Do,” said the driver earnestly. “You will find him standing on the
Haymarket rank at about half-past ten to-night.”
“Yes, I know,” said the detective sardonically.
He had no charge and no warrant, save the search warrant which gave
him the right of entry.
Smith, the driver, was sent about his business, and a detective put on
to shadow him.
With what success this shadowing was done may be gathered from the
fact that at half-past ten that night Inspector Goldberg discovered
the cab he was seeking, and to his amazement found it in the very
place where Smith had told him to expect it. And there the bearded
driver was sitting with all the aplomb of one who was nearing the end
of a virtuous and well-rewarded day.
“Now, George,” said the inspector jocularly, “come down off that perch
and let me have a look at your licence; if it is not made out in your
name I am going to pull you.”
The man did not descend, but he put his hand in his pocket and
produced a little leather wallet.
The inspector opened it and read.
“Ah!” he said exultantly, “as I thought, this is made out in the name
of Smith.”
“I am Smith,” said the driver calmly.
“Get down,” said the inspector.
The man obeyed. There was no question as to his identity.
“You see,” he explained, “when you put your flat-footed splits on to
follow me I had no intention of bothering George. He is big enough to
look after himself, and, by the way, his licence is made out in his
own name, so you need not trouble about that.
“But as soon as I saw you did not trust me,” he said reproachfully,
“why, I sort of got on my metal. I slipped your busy fellow in Oxford
Street, and came on and took my cab from the desperate criminal you
are chasing.”
“Where is he now?” asked Goldberg.
“In his flat, and in bed I trust at this hour,” said the bearded man
virtuously.
With this the inspector had to be content. To make absolutely sure, he
went back to the house off Charing Cross Road, and found, as he
feared, Mr. George Wallis, if not in bed, at least in his
dressing-gown, and the end of his silk pyjamas flapped over his great
woollen slippers.
“My dear good chap,” he expostulated wearily, “am I never to be left
in quiet? Must the unfortunate record which I bear still pursue me,
penitent as I am, and striving, as I may be, to lead that unoffending
life which the State demands of its citizens?”
“Do not make a song about it, George,” grumbled Goldberg. “You have
kept me busy all the night looking after you. Where have you been?”
“I have been to a picture palace,” said the calm man, “observing with
sympathetic interest the struggles of a poor but honest bank clerk to
secure the daughter of his rich and evil boss. I have been watching
cow-boys shooting off their revolvers and sheriffs galloping madly
across plains. I have, in fact, run through the whole gamut of
emotions which the healthy picture palace excites.”
“You talk too much,” said the inspector.
He did not waste any further time, and left Mr. Wallis stifling a
sleepy yawn; but the door had hardly closed behind the detective when
Wallis’s dressing-gown was thrown aside, his pyjamas and woollen
slippers discarded, and in a few seconds the man was fully dressed.
From the front window he saw the little knot of detectives discussing
the matter, and watched them as they moved slowly to the end of the
street. There would be a further discussion there, and then one of
them would come back to his vigil; but before they had reached the end
of the street he was out of the house and walking rapidly in the
opposite direction to that which they had taken.
He had left a light burning to encourage the watcher. He must take his
chance about getting back again without being observed. He made his
way quickly in the direction of the tube station, and a quarter of an
hour later, by judicious transfers, he was in the vicinity of
Hampstead. He walked down the hill towards Belsize Park and picked up
a taxi-cab. He had stopped at the station to telephone, and had made
three distinct calls.
Soon after eleven he was met at Chalk Farm Station by his two
confederates. Thereafter all trace was lost of them. So far, in a
vague and unsatisfactory way, Inspector Goldberg had kept a record of
Wallis’s movements that night.
He had to guess much, and to take something on trust, for the quarry
had very cleverly covered his tracks.
At midnight the guard in the Bank of the Northern Provinces was making
his round, and was ascending the stone steps which led from the vault
below, when three men sprang at him, gagged him and bound him with
incredible swiftness. They did not make any attempt to injure him, but
with scientific thoroughness they placed him in such a position that
he was quite incapable of offering resistance or of summoning
assistance to his aid. They locked him in a small room usually
occupied by the assistant bank manager, and proceeded to their work
downstairs.
“This is going to be a stiff job,” said Wallis, and he put his
electric lamp over the steel grating which led to the entrance to the
strong room.
Persh, the stout man who was with him, nodded.
“The grating is nothing,” he said, “I can get this open.”
“Look for the bells, Callidino,” said Wallis.
The little Italian was an expert in the matter of alarms, and he
examined the door scientifically.
“There is nothing here,” he said definitely.
Persh, who was the best lock man in the world, set to work, and in a
quarter of an hour the gate swung open. Beyond this, at the end of the
passage, was a plain green door, offering no purchase whatever to any
of the instruments they had brought. Moreover, the lock was a
remarkable one, since it was not in the surface of the door itself,
but in a small steel cabinet in the room overhead. But the blow-pipe
was got to work expeditiously. Wallis had the plan of the door
carefully drawn to scale, and he knew exactly where the vital spot in
the massive steel covering was to be found. For an hour and a half
they worked, then Persh stopped suddenly.
“What was that?” he said.
Without another word the three men raced back along the passage, up
the stairs to the big office on the ground floor, Persh leading.
As he made his appearance from the stairway a shot rang out, and he
staggered. He thought he saw a figure moving in the shadow of the
wall, and fired at it.
“You fool!” said Wallis, “you will have the whole place surrounded.”
Again a shot was fired, and this time there was no doubt as to who was
the assailant. Wallis threw the powerful gleam of his lamp in the
direction of the office. With one hand free and the other holding a
revolver, there crouched near the door the guard they had left secure.
Wallis doused his light as the man fired again.
“Out of this, quick!” he cried.
Through the back way they sped, up the little ladder then through the
skylight where they had entered, across the narrow ledge, and through
the hosier’s establishment which had been the means of entrance. Persh
was mortally wounded, though he made the supreme and final effort of
his life. They saw people running in the direction of the Bank, and
heard a police whistle blow; but they came out of the hosier’s shop
together, quietly and without fuss, three respectable gentlemen, one
apparently a little the worse for drink.
Wallis hailed a taxi-cab, and gave elaborate directions. He made no
attempt to hurry whilst Callidino assisted the big man into the
vehicle, then they drove off leisurely. As the cab moved Persh
collapsed into one corner.
“Were you hit?” asked Wallis anxiously.
“I am done for, George, I think,” whispered the man.
George made a careful examination with his lamp and gasped. He was
leaning his head out of the window.
“What are you doing?” asked Persh weakly.
“I am going to take you to the hospital,” said Wallis.
“You will do nothing of the kind,” said the other hoarsely. “For God’s
sake do not jeopardise the whole crowd for me. I tell you I am
finished. I can----”
He said no other word, every muscle in his frame seemed at that moment
to relax, and he slid in a loose heap to the floor.
They lifted him up.
“My God!” said Wallis, “he is dead.”
And dead, indeed, was Persh, that amiable and florid man.
* * * *
“The burglary at the Northern Provinces Bank continues to excite a
great deal of comment in city circles,” wrote the representative of
the _Daily Monitor_.
“The police have made a number of interesting discoveries. There can
be no doubt whatever that the miscreants escaped by way of” (here
followed a fairly accurate description of the method of departure).
“What interests the police, however, is the evidence they are able to
secure as to the presence of another man in the bank who is as yet
unaccounted for. The fourth man seems to have taken no part in the
robbery, and to have been present without the knowledge or without the
goodwill of the burglars. The bank guard who was interviewed this
morning by our representative, was naturally reticent in the interest
of his employers, but he confirmed the rumour that the fourth man,
whoever he was, was not antagonistic so far as he (the guard) was
concerned. It now transpires that the guard had been hastily bound and
gagged by the burglars, who probably, without any intention, had left
their victim in some serious danger, as the gag had been fixed in such
a manner that the unfortunate man nearly died.
“Then when he was almost _in extremis_ there had appeared on the scene
the fourth individual, who had loosened the gag, and made him more
comfortable. It was obvious that he was not a member of the original
burglar gang.
“The theory is offered that on the night in question two separate and
independent sets of burglars were operating against the bank. Whether
that is so or not, a tribute must be paid to the humanity of number
four.”
* * * *
“So that was it.” Wallis read the account in his paper that morning
without resentment. Though the evening had ended disastrously for him,
he had cause for satisfaction. “I should never have forgiven myself if
we had killed that guard,” he said to his companion.
His eyes were tired, and his face was unusually pale. He had spent a
strenuous evening. He sat now in his bucket-shop office, and his sole
companion was Callidino.
“I suppose poor old Persh will catch us,” he said.
“Why Persh?” asked the other.
“The taxi driver will be able to identify us as having been his
companions. I wonder they have not come before. There is no use in
running away. Do you know,” he asked suddenly, “that no man ever
escapes the English police if he is known. It saves a lot of trouble
to await developments.”
“I thought you had been to the station,” said Callidino in surprise.
“I have,” said Wallis, “I went there the first thing--in fact, the
moment I had an excuse--to identify Persh. There is no sense in
pretending we did not know him. The only thing to do is to prove the
necessary alibis. As for me, I was in bed and asleep.”
“Did anybody see you get back?” asked Callidino.
Wallis shook his head.
“No,” he said, “they left one man to look after me, and he did a very
natural thing, he walked up and down the street. There was nothing
easier than to walk the way he was going behind his back and slip in
just when I wanted to.”
Shadowing is a most tiring business, and what very few realise is the
physical strain of remaining in one position, having one object in
view. Even the trained police may be caught napping in the most simple
manner, and as Wallis said, he had found no difficulty in making his
way back to the house without observation. The only danger had been
that during his absence somebody had called.
“What about you?”
Callidino smiled.
“My alibi is more complex,” he said, “and yet more simple. My
excellent compatriots will swear for me. They lie very readily these
Neapolitans.”
“Aren’t you a Neapolitan?”
“Sicilian,” smiled the other. “Neapolitan!”
The contempt in his tone amused Wallis.
“Who is the fourth man?” Callidino asked suddenly.
“Our mysterious stranger, I am certain of that,” said George Wallis
moodily. “But who the devil is he? I have never killed a man in my
life so far, but I shall have to take unusual measures to settle my
curiosity in this respect.
“There will have to be a division of the loot,” he said after a while,
“I will go into it to-day. Persh has relations somewhere in the world,
a daughter or a sister, she must have her share. There is a fake
solicitor in Southwark who will do the work for us. We shall have to
invent an uncle who died.”
Callidino nodded.
“As for me,” he said, rising and stretching himself, “already the
vineyards of the South are appealing to me. I shall build me a villa
in Montecatini and drink the wines, and another on Lake Maggiore and
bathe in the waters. I shall do nothing for the rest of my life save
eat and drink and bathe.”
“A perfectly ghastly idea!” said Wallis.
The question of the fourth man troubled him more than he confessed. It
was shaking his nerves. The police he understood, and was prepared
for, could even combat, but here was the fourth man as cunning as
they, who knew their plans, who followed them, who kept them under
observation. Why? What object had he? He did not doubt that the fourth
man was he who had watched them in Hatton Garden.
If it was a hobby it was a most extraordinary hobby, and the man must
be mad. If he had an object in view, why did he not come out into the
daylight and admit it?
“I wonder how I can get hold of him?” he said half aloud.
“Advertise for him,” said Callidino.
A sharp retort rose to the other’s lips, but he checked it. After all,
there was something in that. One could do many things through the
columns of the daily press.
CHAPTER XII.
THE PLACE WHERE THE LOOT WAS STORED
“Will the Hatton Garden intruder communicate with the man who lay on
the floor, and arrange a meeting. The man on the floor has a
proposition to make, and promises no harm to intruder.”
Gilbert Standerton read the advertisement when he was taking his
breakfast, and a little smile gathered at the corners of his lips.
Edith saw the smile.
“What is amusing you, Gilbert?” she asked.
“A thought,” he said. “I think these advertisements are so funny.”
She had seen the direction of his eyes, carefully noted the page of
the paper, and waited for an opportunity to examine for herself the
cause of his amusement.
“By the way,” he said carelessly, “I am putting some money to your
credit at the bank to-day.”
“Mine?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Yes, I have been rather fortunate on the Stock Exchange lately--I
made twelve thousand pounds out of American rails.”
She looked at him steadily.
“Do you mean that?” she asked.
“What else could I mean?” he demanded. “You see, American rails have
been rather jumpy of late, and so have I.” He smiled again. “I jumped
in when they were low and jumped out when they were high. Here is the
broker’s statement.” He drew it from his pocket and passed it across
the table to her.
“I feel,” he said, with a pretence of humour, “that you should know I
do not secure my entire income from my nefarious profession.”
She made no response to this. She knew who the fourth man had been.
Why had he gone there? What had been his object?
If he had been a detective, or if he had been in the employ of the
Government, he would have confessed it. Her heart had sunk when she
had read the interesting theory which had been put forward by the
journal.
He was the second burglar.
She thought all this with the paper he had passed to her on the table
before her.
The broker’s statement was clear enough. Here were the amounts, all
columns ruled and carried forward.
“You will observe that I have not put it all to your credit,” he
bantered, “some of it has gone to mine.”
“Gilbert,” she asked, “why do you keep things from me?”
“What do I keep from you?” he asked.
“Why do you keep from me the fact that you were in the bank the night
before last when this horrible tragedy occurred?”
He did not answer immediately.
“I have not kept it from you,” he said. “I have practically admitted
it--in an unguarded moment, I confess, but I did admit it.”
“What were you doing there?” she demanded.
“Making my fortune,” he said solemnly.
But she was not to be put off by his flippancy.
“What were you doing there?” she asked again.
“I was watching three interesting burglars at work,” he said, “as I
have watched them not once but many times. You see, I am specially
gifted in one respect. Nature intended me to be a burglar, but
education and breed and a certain lawfulness of character prohibited
that course. I am a dilettante: I do not commit crime, but I am
monstrously interested in it. I seek,” he said slowly, “to discover
what fascination crime has over the normal mind; also I have an
especial reason for checking the amount these men collect.”
Her puzzled frown hurt him; he did not want to bother her, but she
knew so much now that he must tell her more.
He had thought it would have been possible to have hidden everything
from her, but people cannot live together in the same house and be
interested in one another’s comings and goings without some of their
cherished secrets being revealed.
“What I cannot understand----” she said slowly and was at a loss for
an introduction to this delicate subject.
“What cannot you understand?” he asked.
“I cannot understand why you suddenly dropped all your normal
pleasures, why you left the Foreign Office, why you gave up music, and
why, above all things, that this change in your life should have come
about immediately after the playing of the ‘Melody in F.’”
He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was low and
troubled.
“You are not exactly right,” he said. “I had begun my observations
into the ways of the criminal before that tune was played.” He paused.
“I admit that I had some fear in my mind that sooner or later the
‘Melody in F’ would be played under my window, and I was making a
half-hearted preparation against the evil day. That is all I can tell
you,” he said.
“Tell me this,” she asked as he rose, “if I had loved you, and had
been all that you desired, would you have adopted this course?”
He thought awhile. “I cannot tell you,” he said at length; “possibly I
should, perhaps I should not. Yes,” he said, nodding his head, “I
should have done what I am doing now, only it would have been harder
to do if you had loved me. As it is----” he shrugged his shoulders.
He went out soon after, and she found the paper he had been reading,
and without difficulty discovered the advertisement.
Then he was the Hatton Garden intruder, and what he had said was true.
He had observed these people, and they had known they were being
observed.
With a whirling brain she sat down to piece together the threads of
mystery. She was no nearer a solution when she had finished, from
sheer exhaustion, than when she had begun.
* * * *
Gilbert had not intended spending the night away from his house. He
realised that his wife would worry, and that she would have a genuine
grievance; apart from which he was, in a sense, domesticated, and if
the life he was living was an unusual one, it had its charm and its
attraction.
The knowledge that he would meet her every morning, speak to her
during the day, and that he had in her a growing friend was
particularly pleasing to him.
He had gone to a little office that he rented over a shop in
Cheapside, an office which his work in the City had made necessary.
He unlocked the door of the tiny room, which was situated on the third
floor, and entered, closing the door behind him. There were one or two
letters which had come to him in the capacity in which he appeared as
the tenant of the office. They were mainly business communications,
and required little or no attention.
He sat down at his desk to write a note; he thought he might be late
that night, and wanted to explain his absence. His wife occupied a
definite place in his life, and though she exercised no rights over
his movements, yet could quite reasonably expect to be informed of his
immediate plans.
He had scarcely put pen to paper when a knock came to the door.
“Come in,” said Gilbert in some surprise.
It was not customary for people to call upon him here. He expected to
see a wandering canvasser in search of an order, but the man that came
in was nothing so commonplace. Gilbert knew him as a Mr. Wallis, an
affable and a pleasant man.
“Sit down, will you?” he said, without a muscle of his face wrong.
“I want to see you, Mr. Standerton,” said Wallis, and made no attempt
to seat himself. “Would you care to come to my office?”
“I can see you here, I think,” said Gilbert calmly.
“I prefer to see you in my office,” said the man, “we are less liable
to interruption. You are not afraid to come, I suppose?” he said with
the hint of a smile.
“I am not to be piqued into coming, at any rate,” smiled Gilbert; “but
since this is not a very expansive office, nor conducive to expansive
thought, I will go with you. I presume you intend taking me into your
confidence?”
He looked at the other man strangely and Wallis nodded.
The two men left the office together, and Gilbert wondered exactly
what proposition the other would put to him.
Ten minutes later they were in the St. Bride Street store, that
excellent Safe Agency whose business apparently was increasing by
leaps and bounds.
Gilbert Standerton looked round. The manager was there, a model of
respectability. He bowed politely to Wallis, and was somewhat
surprised to see him perhaps, for the proprietor of the St. Bride’s
Safe Agency was a rare visitor.
“My office, I think?” suggested Wallis.
He closed the door behind them.
“Now exactly what do you want?” asked Gilbert.
“Will you have a cigar?” Mr. Wallis pushed the box towards him.
Gilbert smiled.
“You need not be scared of them,” said Wallis with a twinkle in his
eye. “There is nothing dopey or wrong with these, they are my own
special brand.”
“I do not smoke cigars,” said Gilbert.
“Lie number one,” replied Wallis cheerfully. “This is a promising
beginning to an exchange of confidences. Now, Mr. Standerton, we are
going to be very frank with one another, at least I am going to be
very frank with you. I hope you will reciprocate, because I think I
deserve something. You know so much about me, and I know so little
about you, that it would be fair if we evened matters up.”
“I take you,” said Gilbert, “and if I can see any advantage in doing
so you may be sure I shall act on your suggestion.”
“A few months ago,” said Mr. Wallis, puffing slowly at his cigar, and
regarding the ceiling with an attentive eye, “I and one of my friends
were engaged in a scientific work.”
Gilbert nodded.
“In the midst of that work we were interrupted by a gentleman, who for
a reason best known to himself modestly hid his features behind a
mask.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I deplore the melodrama, but I
applaud the discretion. Since then,” he went on, “the efforts of my
friends in their scientific pursuit of wealth have been hampered and
hindered by that same gentleman. Sometimes we have seen him, and
sometimes we have only discovered his presence after we have retired
from the scene of our labour. Now, Mr. Standerton, this young man may
have excellent reasons for all he is doing, but he is considerably
jeopardising our safety.”
“Who is the young man?” asked Gilbert Standerton.
“The young man,” said Mr. Wallis, without taking his eyes from the
ceiling, “is yourself.”
“How do you know?” asked Gilbert quietly.
“I know,” said the other with a smile, “and there is an end to it. I
can prove it curiously enough without having actually spotted your
face.” He pulled an inkpad from the end of the desk. “Will you make a
little finger-mark upon that sheet of paper?” he asked, and offered a
sheet of paper.
Gilbert shook his head with a smile.
“I see no reason why I should,” he said coolly.
“Exactly. If you did we should find a very interesting finger-mark to
compare with it. In the office here,” Mr. Wallis went on, “we have a
large safe which has been on our hands for some months.”
Gilbert nodded.
“Owned by a client who has the keys,” he said.
“Exactly,” said Wallis. “You remember my lie about it. There are three
sets of keys to that safe and a combination word. I said three”--he
corrected himself carefully--“there are really four. By an act of
gross carelessness on my part, I left the keys of the safe in my
pocket in this very office three weeks ago.
“I must confess,” he said with a smile, “that I did not suspect you of
having so complete a knowledge of my doings or of my many secrets. I
remembered my folly at eleven o’clock that night, and came back for
what I had left behind. I found them exactly where I had left them,
but somebody else had found them, too, and that somebody else had
taken a wax impression of them. Moreover,” he leant forward towards
Gilbert, lowering his voice, “that somebody else has since formed the
habit of coming to this place nightly for reasons of his own. Do you
know what those reasons are, Mr. Standerton?”
“To choose a safe?” suggested Gilbert ironically.
“He comes to rob us of the fruits of our labour,” said Wallis.
He smiled as he said the words because he had a sense of humour.
“Some individual who has a conscience or a sense of rectitude which
prevents him from becoming an official burglar is engaged in the
fascinating pursuit of robbing the robber. In other words, some twenty
thousand pounds in solid cash has been taken from my safe.”
“Borrowed, I do not doubt,” said Gilbert Standerton, and leant back in
his chair, his hands stuffed into his pockets, and a hard look upon
his face.
“What do you mean--borrowed?” asked Wallis in surprise.
“Borrowed by somebody who is desperately in need of money; somebody
who understands the Stock Exchange much better than many of the men
who make a special study of it; somebody with such knowledge as would
enable him to gamble heavily with a minimum chance of loss, and yet,
despite this, fearing to injure some unfortunate broker by the
accident of failure.”
He leant towards Wallis, his elbow upon the desk, his face half
averted from the other. He had heard the outer door close with a bang,
and knew they were alone now, and that Wallis had designed it so.
“I wanted money badly,” he said. “I could have stolen it easily. I
intended stealing it. I watched you for a month. I have watched
criminals for years. I know as many tricks of the trade as you.
Remember that I was in the Foreign Office, in that department which
had to do mainly with foreign crooks, and that I was virtually a
police officer, though I had none of the authority.”
“I know all about that,” said Wallis.
He was curious, he desired information for his own immediate use, he
desired it, too, that his sum of knowledge concerning humanity should
be enlarged.
“I am a thief--in effect. The reason does not concern you.”
“Had the ‘Melody in F’ anything to do with it?” asked the other dryly.
Gilbert Standerton sprang to his feet.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Just what I say,” said the other, watching him keenly. “I understand
that you had an eccentric desire to hear that melody played. Why? I
must confess I am curious.”
“Reserve your curiosity for something which concerns you,” said the
other roughly. “Where did you learn?” he added the question, and
Wallis laughed.
“We have sources of information----” he began magniloquently.
“Oh, yes,” Gilbert nodded, “of course, your friend Smith lodges with
the Wings. I had forgotten that.”
“My friend Smith--you refer to my chauffeur, I suppose?”
“I refer to your confederate, the fourth member of your gang, the man
who never appears in any of your exploits, and who in various guises
is laying down the foundation for robberies of the future. Oh, I know
all about this place,” he said. He waved his hand around the shop. “I
know this scheme of a Safe Agency; it is ingenious, but it is not
original. I think it was done some years ago in Italy. You tout safes
round to country mansions, offer them at ridiculous prices, and the
rest is simple. You have the keys, and at any moment you can go into a
house into which such a safe has been sold with the certain knowledge
that all the valuables and all the portable property will be assembled
in the one spot and accessible to you.”
Wallis nodded.
“Quite right, friend,” he said. “I need no information concerning
myself. Will you kindly explain exactly what part you are taking? Are
you under the impression that you are numbered amongst the honest?”
“I do not,” said the other shortly. “The morality of my actions has
nothing whatever to do with the matter. I have no illusion.”
“You are a fortunate man,” said George Wallis approvingly. “But will
you please tell me what part you are playing, and how you justify your
action in removing from time to time large sums of money from our
possession to some secret depository of your own?”
“I do not justify it,” said Gilbert.
He got up and paced the little office, the other watching him
narrowly.
“I tell you I know that I am in intent a thief, but I am working to a
plan.”
He turned to the other.
“Do you know that there is not a robbery you have committed of which I
do not know the absolute effect? There is not a piece of jewellery you
have taken of which I do not know the owner and the exact value? Yes,”
he nodded, “I am aware that you have not ‘fenced’--that is the term,
isn’t it?--a single article, and that in your safe place you have them
all stored. I hope by good fortune not only to compensate you for what
I have taken from you, but to return every penny that you have
stolen.”
Wallis started.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“To its rightful owner,” continued Gilbert calmly. “I have striven to
be in a position to say to you: ‘Here is a necklace belonging to Lady
Dynshird, it is worth four thousand pounds, I will give you a fair
price for it, let us say a thousand--it is rather more than you could
sell it for--and we will restore it to its owner.’ I want to say to
you: ‘I have taken ten thousand sovereigns in bullion and in French
banknotes from your store, here is that amount for yourself, here is
a similar amount which is to be restored to the people from whom it
was taken.’ I have kept a careful count of every penny you have taken
since I joined your gang as an unofficial member.”
He smiled grimly.
“My dear Quixote,” drawled George Wallis protestingly, “you are
setting yourself an impossible task.”
Gilbert Standerton shook his head.
“Indeed I am not,” he said. “I have made much more money on the Stock
Exchange than ever I thought I should possess in my life.”
“Will you tell me this?” asked the other. “What is the explanation of
this sudden desire of yours for wealth--for sudden desire I gather it
was?”
“That I cannot explain,” said Gilbert, and his tone was
uncompromising.
There was a little pause, then George Wallis rose.
“I think we had better understand one another now,” he said. “You have
taken from us nearly twenty thousand pounds--twenty thousand pounds of
our money swept out of existence.”
Gilbert shook his head.
“No, there is not a penny of it gone. I tell you I used it as a
reserve in case I should want it. As a matter of fact, I shall not
want it now,” he smiled, “I could restore it to you to-night.”
“You will greatly oblige me if you do,” said the other.
Gilbert looked at him.
“I rather like you, Wallis,” he said, “there is something admirable
about you, rascal that you are.”
“Rascals as we are,” corrected Wallis. “You who have no illusions do
not create one now.”
“I suppose that is so,” said the other moodily.
“How is this going to end?” asked Wallis. “Where do we share out, and
are you prepared to carry on this high-soul arrangement as long as my
firm is in existence?”
Standerton shook his head.
“No,” he said, “your business ends to-night.”
“My business?” asked the startled Wallis.
“Your business,” said the other. “You have made enough money to retire
on. Get out. I have made sufficient money to take over all your stock
at valuation”--he smiled again--“and to restore every penny that has
been stolen by you. I was coming to you in a few days with that
proposition.”
“And so we end to-night, do we?” mused Wallis. “My dear good man,” he
said cheerfully, “to-night--why I am going out after the most
wonderful coup of all! You would laugh if you knew who was my intended
victim.”
“I am not easily amused in these days,” said Gilbert. “Who is it?”
“I will tell you another time,” said Wallis.
He walked to the office door, his hands in his pockets. He stood for a
moment admiring a huge safe and whistling a little tune.
“Don’t you think it an excellent idea of mine,” he asked with the
casual air of the suburban householder showing off a new cucumber
frame, “this safe?”
“I think it is most excellent.”
“Business is good,” said Wallis regretfully. “It is a pity to give it
up after we have taken so much trouble. You see, we may not sell half
a dozen safes a year to the right kind of people, but if we only sell
one--why we pay expenses! It is so simple,” he said.
“By the way, have you missed a necklace of sorts which has been
restored to the police? Do not apologise!”
He raised his hand.
“I understand this is a family matter. I am sorry to have caused you
any inconvenience.”
His ironical politeness amused the other.
“It was not a question of family,” he said. “I had no idea as to its
ownership, only some person had been very careless--I found the
necklace outside the safe. Some property had evidently been hidden in
a hurry, and had fallen down.”
“I am greatly obliged to you,” said Wallis. “You removed what might
possibly have been a great temptation for the honest Mr. Timmings.”
He took a key from his pocket, switched round the combination lock,
and opened the safe. There was nothing in the first view to suggest
that it was the storehouse of the most notorious thief in London.
Every article therein had been most carefully wrapped and packed. He
closed the door again.
“That is only half the treasure,” he said.
“Only half--what do you mean?”
Gilbert was genuinely surprised, and a little mocking smile played
about the mouth of the other.
“I thought that would upset you,” he said. “That is only half. I will
show you something. Since you know so much, why shouldn’t you know
all?”
He walked back into the office. A door led into another room. He
unlocked this, and opening it passed through, Gilbert following.
Inside was a small room lit by a skylight. The centre of the room was
occupied by what appeared to be a large cage. It was in reality a
steel grill, which is sometimes sold by French firms to surround a
safe.
“A pretty cage,” said Mr. Wallis admiringly.
He unlocked the tiny steel gate and stepped through, and Gilbert
stepped after him.
“How did you get it in?” asked Gilbert curiously.
“It was brought in in pieces, and has just been set up in order to
show a customer. It is very easily taken apart, and two or three
mechanics can clear it away in a day.”
“Is this your other department?” asked Gilbert dryly.
“In a sense it is,” said Wallis, “and I will show you why. If you go
to the corner and pull down the first bar you will see something which
perhaps you have never seen before.”
Gilbert was half-way to the corner, when the transparency of the trick
struck him. He turned quickly, but a revolver was pointed straight at
his heart.
“Put up your hands, Mr. Gilbert Standerton,” said George. “You may be
perfectly bona fide in your intentions to share out, but I was
thinking that I would rather finish to-night’s job before I relinquish
business. You see, it will be poetic justice. Your uncle----”
“My uncle!” said Gilbert.
“Your uncle,” bowed the other, “an admirable but testy old gentleman,
who in one of our best safes has deposited nearly a quarter of a
million pounds’ worth of jewellery, the famous Standerton diamonds,
which I suppose you will one day inherit.”
“Is it not poetic justice,” he asked as he backed his way out, still
covering his prisoner with his revolver, “to rob _you_ just a little?
Possibly,” he went on, with grim humour, “I also may have a
conscience, and may attempt to restore to you the property which
to-night I shall steal.”
He clanged the gate to, doubly locked it, and walked to the door which
led to the office.
“You will stay here for forty-eight hours,” he said, “at the end of
which time you will be released--on my word. It may be inconvenient
for you, but there are many inconvenient happenings in this life which
we must endure. I commend you to Providence.”
He went out, and was gone for a quarter of an hour.
Gilbert thought he had left, but he returned carrying a large jug of
coffee, two brand new quart vacuum flasks, and two packages of what
proved to be sandwiches.
“I cannot starve you,” he said. “You had better keep your coffee hot.
You will have a long wait, and as you may be cold I have brought
this.”
He went back to the office and carried out two heavy overcoats and
thrust them through the bars.
“That is very decent of you,” said Gilbert.
“Not at all,” said the polite Mr. Wallis.
Gilbert was unarmed, and had he possessed a weapon it would have been
of no service to him.
The pistol had not left Wallis’s hand, and even as he handed the food
through the grill the butt of the automatic Colt was still gripped in
his palm.
“I wish you a very good evening. If you would like to send a perfectly
non-committal note to your wife, saying that you were too busy to come
back, I should be delighted to see it delivered.”
He passed through the bars a sheet of paper and a stylograph pen. It
was a thoughtful thing to do, and Gilbert appreciated it.
This man, scoundrel as he was, had nicer instincts than many who had
never brought themselves within the pale of the law.
He scribbled a note excusing himself, folded up the sheet and placed
it in the envelope, sealing it down before he realised that his captor
would want to read it.
“I am very sorry,” he said, “but you can open it, the gum is still
wet.”
Wallis shook his head.
“If you will tell me that there is nothing more than I asked you to
write, or than I expected you to write, that is sufficient,” he said.
So he left Gilbert alone and with much to think about.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MAKER OF WILLS
General Sir John Standerton was a man of hateful and irascible
temper. The excuse was urged for him that he had spent the greater
portion of his life in India, a country calculated to undermine the
sweetest disposition. He was a bachelor and lived alone, save for a
small army of servants. He had renamed the country mansion he had
purchased twenty years before: it was now known from one end of the
country to the other as The Residency, and here he maintained an
almost feudal state.
His enemies said that he kept his battalion of servants at full
strength so that he might always have somebody handy to swear at, but
that was obviously spite. It was said, too, that every year a fresh
firm of solicitors acted for him, and it is certain that he changed
his banks with extraordinary rapidity.
Leslie Frankfort was breakfasting with his brother one morning in his
little Mayfair house. Jack Frankfort was a rising young solicitor, and
a member of that firm which at the moment was acting for Sir John
Standerton.
“By the way,” said Jack Frankfort, “I am going to see an old friend of
yours this afternoon.”
“Who is my old friend?”
“Old Standerton.”
“Gilbert?”
Jack Frankfort smiled.
“No, Gilbert’s terrible uncle; we are acting for him just now.”
“What is the object of the visit?”
“A will, my boy; we are going to make a will.”
“I wonder how many wills the old man has made?” mused Leslie. “Poor
Gilbert!”
“Why poor Gilbert?” asked the other, helping himself to the marmalade.
“Why, he was his uncle’s heir for about ten minutes.”
Jack grinned.
“Everybody is old Standerton’s heir for ten minutes,” he said.
“I verily believe he has endowed every hospital, every dog’s home,
every cat’s home, every freakish institution that the world has ever
heard of, in the course of the last twenty years, and he is making
another will to-day.”
“Put in a good word for Gilbert,” said Leslie with a smile.
The other growled.
“There is not a chance of putting in a good word for anybody. Old
Tomlins, who acted for him last, said that the greater difficulty in
making a will for the old beggar is to finish one before the old man
has thought out another. Anyway, he is keen on a will just now, and I
am going down to see him. Come along?”
“You know the old gentleman?”
“Not on your life,” said the other hastily. “I know him indeed, and he
knows me! He knows I am a pal of Gilbert’s. I stayed once with him for
about two days. For the Lord’s sake do not confess that you are my
brother, or he will find another firm of solicitors.”
“I do not usually boast of my relationship with you,” said Jack.
“You are an offensive devil,” said the other admiringly. “But I
suppose you have to be, being a solicitor.”
Jack Frankfort journeyed down to Huntingdon that afternoon in the
company of a pleasant man, with whom he found himself in conversation
without any of that awkwardness of introductions which makes the
average English passenger so impossible.
This gentleman had evidently been in all parts of the world, and knew
a great many people whom Jack knew. He chatted interestingly for an
hour on the strange places of the earth, and when the train drew up at
the little station at which Mr. Frankfort was alighting, the other
accompanied him.
“What an extraordinary coincidence,” said the stranger heartily. “I am
getting out here too. This is a rum little town, isn’t it?”
It might be described as “rum,” but it was very pleasant, and it
contained one of the most comfortable hostelries in England.
The fellow-passengers found themselves placed in adjoining rooms.
Jack Frankfort had hoped to conclude his business before the evening
and return to London by a late train, but he knew that it would be
unwise to depend upon the old man’s expedition.
As a matter of fact, he had hardly been in the hotel a quarter of an
hour before he received an intimation from The Residency that Sir John
could not be seen until ten o’clock that evening.
“That settles all idea of going back to London,” said Jack
despairingly.
He met his fellow-passenger at dinner.
Though he was not particularly well acquainted with the habits of Sir
John, he knew that one of his fads was to dine late, and since he had
no desire to spend a hungry evening, he advanced the normal dinner
hour of the little hotel by thirty minutes.
He explained this apologetically to the comfortable man who sat
opposite him, as they discussed a perfectly roasted capon.
“It suits me very well,” said the other, “I have a lot of work to do
in the neighbourhood. You see,” he explained, “I am the proprietor of
the Safe Agency.”
“Safe Agency,” repeated the other wonderingly.
The man nodded.
“It seems a queer business, but it is a fairly extensive one,” he
said. “We deal principally in safes and strong rooms, second-hand or
new. We have a pretty large establishment in London; but I am not
going to overstep the bounds of politeness”--he smiled--“and try to
sell you some of my stock.”
Frankfort was amused.
“Safe Agency,” he said; “one never realises that there can be money in
that sort of thing.”
“One cannot realise that there is money in any branch of commerce,”
said the other. “The money-making concerns which appeal are those
where one sees brains being turned into actual cash.”
“Such as----?”
“Such as a lawyer’s business,” smiled the other. “Oh, yes, I know you
are a lawyer, you are the type, and I should have known your trade if
I had not seen your dispatch case, and then your name.”
Jack Frankfort laughed.
“You are sharp enough to be a lawyer yourself,” he suggested.
“You are paying yourself a compliment,” said the other.
Later, in the High Street, when he was calling a fly to drive him to
The Residency, Jack noticed a big covered motor lorry, bearing only
the simple inscription on its side: “The St. Bride’s Safe Company.”
He saw also his pleasant companion speaking earnestly with the
black-bearded chauffeur.
A little later the lorry moved on through the narrow streets of the
town and took the London Road.
Jack Frankfort had no time to speculate upon the opportunities for
safe selling which the little town offered, for five minutes later he
was in Sir John Standerton’s study.
The old General was of the type which is frequently depicted in
humorous papers. He was stout and red of face, and wore a close-cut
strip of white whisker, which ended abruptly below his ear, and was
continued in a wild streak of white moustache across his face. He was
bald, save for a little fringe of white hair which ran from temple to
temple via the occiput, and his conversation might be described as a
succession of explosions.
He stared up from under his ferocious eyebrow, as the young man
entered the study, and took stock of him.
He was used to lawyers. He had had every variety, and had divided them
into two distinct classes--they were either rogues or fools. There was
no intermediate stage with this old man, and he had no doubt in his
mind that Jack Frankfort, a shrewd-looking young man, was to be
classed in the former category. He bullied him into a seat.
“I want to see you about my will,” he said. “I have been seriously
thinking lately of rearranging the distribution of my property.”
This was his invariable formula. It was intended to convey the
impression that he had arrived at this present state of mind after
very long and careful consideration, and that the making of wills was
a serious and an important business to be undertaken, perhaps, once or
twice in a man’s lifetime.
Jack nodded.
“Very good, General,” he said. “Have you a draft?”
“I have no draft,” snapped the other. “I have a will which has already
been prepared, and here is a copy.”
He threw it across to his solicitor.
“I do not know whether you have seen this?”
“I think I have one in my bag,” said Jack.
“What the devil do you mean by carrying my will about in your bag?”
snarled the other.
“That is the only place I could think of,” said the young man, calmly.
“You would not like me to carry it about in my trouser’s pocket, would
you?”
The General stared.
“Do not be impertinent, young man,” he said ominously.
It was not a good beginning, but Jack knew that every method had been
tried, from the sycophantic to the pompous, but none had succeeded,
and the end of all endeavours, so far as the solicitors were
concerned, had been the closing of their association with the
General’s estate.
He was rather a valuable client if he could only be retained. No human
solicitor had discovered a method of retaining him.
“Very well,” said the General at last. “Now please jot down exactly
what my wishes are, and have the will drafted accordingly. In the
first place, I revoke all former wills.”
Jack, with a sheet of paper and a pencil, nodded and noted the fact.
“In the second place I want you to make absolutely certain that not a
penny of my money goes to Dr. Sundle’s Dogs’ Home. The man has been
insolent to me, and I hate dogs, anyhow. Not a penny of my money is to
go to any hospital or to any charitable institution whatever.”
The old sinner declaimed this with relish.
“I had intended leaving a very large sum of money to a hospital fund,”
he explained, “but after the behaviour of this infernal
Government----”
Jack might have asked in what way the old man expected to get even
with the offending Government by denying support to all institutions
designed to help the poor, but wisely kept the question in the
background.
“No charitable institution whatever.”
The old man spoke slowly, emphatically, thumping the table with every
other word.
“A hundred pounds to the Army Temperance Association, though I think
it is a jackass of an institution. A hundred pounds to the Soldiers’
Home at Aldershot, and a thousand pounds if they make it
non-sectarian.” He grinned and added: “It will be Church of England to
everlasting doomsday, so that money’s safe! And,” he added, “no money
to the Cottage Hospital here--do not let that bequest creep in. That
stupid maniac of a doctor--I forget his beastly name--led the
agitation for opening a right-o’-way across my estate. I will
‘right-o’-way’ him!” he said viciously.
He spent half an hour specifying the people who were not to benefit by
his will, and the total amount of his reluctant bequests during that
period did not exceed a thousand pounds.
When he had finished he stared hopelessly at the young lawyer, and a
momentary glint of humour came in the hard old blue eyes.
“I think we have disposed of everybody,” he said, “without disposing
of anything. Do you know my nephew?” he asked suddenly.
“I know a friend of your nephew.”
“Are you related to that grinning idiot Leslie Frankfort?” roared the
old man.
“He is my brother,” said the other calmly.
“Humph,” said the General, “I thought I recognised the face. Have you
met Gilbert Standerton?” he asked suddenly.
“I have met him once or twice,” said Jack Frankfort carelessly, “as
you may have met people, just to say ‘how do you do?’ and that sort of
thing.”
“I have never met people to say ‘how do you do?’ and that sort of
thing,” protested the old man with a snort. “What sort of fellow do
you think he is?” he asked after a pause.
The injunction of Leslie to “say a good word for Gilbert” came to the
young man’s mind.
“I think he is a very decent sort of fellow,” he said, “though
somewhat reserved and a little stand-offish.”
The old man glowered at him.
“My nephew stand-offish?” he snapped, “Of course he is stand-offish.
Do you think a Standerton is everybody’s money? There is nothing
Tommyish or Dickish or Harryish about our family, sir. We are all
stand-offish, thank God! I am the most stand-offish man you ever met
in your life.”
“That I can well believe,” thought Jack, but did not give utterance to
his thought.
Instead he pursued the subject in his own cunning way.
“He is the sort of man,” he said innocently “whom I should think money
would be rather wasted on.”
“Why?” asked the General with rising wrath.
Jack shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, he makes no great show, does not attempt to keep any particular
place in London Society. In fact, he treats Society as though he were
superior to it.”
“And so he is,” growled the General, “we are all superior to Society.
Do you think, sir, that I care a damn about any of the people in this
county? Do you think I am impressed by my Lord of High Towers and my
Lady of the Grange, and the various upstart parvenu aristocrats that
swarm over this country like--like--field mice? No sir! And I trust my
nephew is in the same mind. Society as it is at present constituted is
not worth that!” He snapped his fingers in Jack’s impassive face.
“That settles it,” said the General with decision. He pointed his
finger at the notes which the other was taking. “The residue of my
property I leave to Gilbert Standerton. Make a note of that.”
Twice had he uttered the same words in his lifetime, and twice had he
changed his mind. It might well be that he would change his mind
again. If the reputation he bore was justified, the morning would find
him in another frame of mind.
“Stay over to-morrow,” he said at parting. “Bring me the draft at
breakfast time.”
“At what hour?” asked Jack politely.
“At breakfast time,” roared the old man.
“What is your breakfast hour?”
“The same hour as every other civilised human being,” snapped the
General “at twenty-five minutes to one. What time do you breakfast,
for Heaven’s sake?”
“At twenty to one,” said Jack sweetly, and was pleased with himself
all the way back to the hotel.
He did not see his train companion that night, but met him at
breakfast the next morning at the Christian hour of half-past eight.
Something had happened in the meantime to change the equable and
cheery character of the other. He was sombre and silent, and he looked
worried, almost ill, Jack thought. Possibly there was a bad time for
safe selling, as there was a bad time for every other department of
trade.
Thinking this, he kept off the subject of business, and scarcely half
a dozen sentences were exchanged between the two during the meal.
Returning to The Residency, Jack Frankfort found with surprise that
the old man had not changed his mind over night. He was still of the
same opinion; seemed more emphatically so. Indeed, Jack had the
greatest difficulty in preventing him from striking off a miserable
hundred pounds bequest which he had made to a northern dispensary.
“The whole of the money should be kept in the family,” said the
General shortly; “it is absurd to fritter away little hundreds like
this, it handicaps a man. I do not suppose he will have the handling
of the money for many years yet, but ‘forethought,’ sir, is the motto
of our family.”
It was all to Gilbert’s advantage that the lawyer persisted in
demanding the restoration of the dispensary bequest. In the end the
General cut out every bequest in the will, and in the shortest
document which he had ever signed bequeathed the whole of his
property, movable and immovable, to “my dear nephew” absolutely.
“He is married isn’t he?” he asked.
“I believe he is,” said Jack Frankfort.
“You believe! Now what is the good of your believing?” protested the
old man. “You are my lawyer, and your business is to know everything.
Find out if he is married, who his wife is, where she came from, and
ask them up to dinner.”
“When?” demanded the startled lawyer.
“To-night,” said the old man. “There is a man coming down from
Yorkshire to see me, my doctor, we will make a jolly party. Is she
pretty?”
“I believe she is.”
Jack hesitated, for he was honestly in doubt. He knew very little
about Gilbert Standerton or his affairs.
“If she is pretty, and she is a lady,” said the old General slowly, “I
will also make provision for her separately.”
Jack’s heart sank. Would this mean another will? For good or ill, the
wires were dispatched.
Edith received hers and read it in wonder.
Gilbert’s remained on the hall table, for he had not been home the
previous night nor during that day.
The tear-reddened eyes of the girl offered eloquent testimony to the
interest she displayed in his movements.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE STANDERTON DIAMONDS
Edith Standerton made a quick preparation for her journey. She would
take her maid into Huntingdon, and go without Gilbert. It was
embarrassing that she must go alone, but she had set herself a task,
and if she could help her husband by appearing at the dinner of his
irritable relative she would do so.
She had her evening things packed, and caught the four o’clock train
for the town of Tinley.
The old man did her the exceptional honour of meeting her at the
station.
“Where is Gilbert?” he asked when they had mutually introduced
themselves.
“He has been called out of town unexpectedly,” she said. “He will be
awfully upset when he knows.”
“I think not,” said the old General grimly. “It takes a great deal to
upset Gilbert--certainly more than an opportunity of being reconciled
to a grouchy old man. As a matter of fact,” he went on, “there is no
reconciliation necessary; but I always look upon anybody whom I have
to cut out of my will as one who regards me as a mortal enemy.”
“Please never put me in your will.”
She smiled.
“I’m not so sure about that,” said he, and added gallantly, “though I
think Nature has sufficiently endowed you to enable you to dispense
with such mundane gifts as money!”
She made a little face at that.
He was delighted with her, and found her a charming companion. Edith
Standerton exerted herself to please him. She had a style of treating
people older than herself in such a way as to suggest that she was as
young as they. I do not know any other phrase which would more exactly
convey my meaning than that. She had a charm which appealed to this
wayward old man.
Edith did not know the cause of the change in her husband’s fortunes.
She knew very little, indeed, of his affairs; enough she knew that for
some reason or other he had been disinherited through no fault of his
own. She did not even know that it was the result of a caprice of this
old man.
“You must come again and bring Gilbert,” said the General, before they
dispersed to dress for dinner. “I shall be delighted to put you both
up.”
Fortunately she was saved the embarrassment of an answer, for the
General jumped up suddenly.
“I know what you’d like to see,” he said, “you’d like to see the
Standerton diamonds, and so you shall!”
She had no desire to see the Standerton diamonds, had, indeed, no
knowledge that such an heirloom existed; but he was delighted at the
prospect of showing her, and she, being a woman, was not averse to a
view of these precious jewels, even though she were not destined to
wear them.
He led the way up to the library, and Jack Frankfort followed.
“There they are,” said the old man proudly, and pointed to a big safe
in the corner, a large and ornate safe.
“That is something new,” he said proudly. “I bought it from a man who
wanted sixty guineas for it--an infernal, swindling, travelling
rascal! I got it for thirty. What do you think of that for a safe?”
“I think it’s very pretty,” said Jack. He could think of nothing more
fitting.
The old man glared at him.
“Pretty!” he growled. “What do you think I want with ‘pretty’ things
in my library?”
He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened the door of the
safe, pulled open a drawer, and took out a large morocco case.
“There they are!” he said with pride, and indeed he might well be
proud of such a beautiful collection.
With all a girl’s love for pretty things Edith handled the gorgeous
jewels eagerly. The setting was old-fashioned, but it was the old
fashion which was at that moment being copied. The stones sparkled and
glittered as though every facet carried a tiny electric lamp to send
forth the green, blue and roseate gleam of its fire.
Even Jack Frankfort, no great lover of jewellery, was fascinated by
the sight.
“Why, sir,” he said, “there are nearly a hundred thousand pounds’
worth of gems there.”
“More,” said the old man. “I’ve a pearl necklace here,” and he pulled
out another drawer, “look at it. There is nearly two hundred thousand
pounds’ worth of jewellery in that safe.”
“In a thirty-guinea safe,” said Jack unwisely.
The old man turned on him.
“In a sixty-guinea safe,” he corrected violently. “Didn’t I tell you I
beat the devil down? I beg your pardon, my dear.” He chuckled at the
thought, replaced the jewels, and locked the safe again. “Sixty
guineas he wanted. Came here with all his fine City of London manner,
frock-coat, top-hat, and patent boots, my dear. The way these people
get up is scandalous. He might have been a gentleman by the airs he
gave himself.”
Jack looked at the safe. He had some ideas of commercial values.
“I can’t understand how he sold it,” he said. “This safe is worth two
hundred pounds.”
“What?”
The old General turned on his lawyer in astonishment.
Jack nodded.
“I have one at my office, now that I come to think of it,” he said.
“It cost two hundred and twenty pounds, and it is the same make.”
“He only asked me sixty guineas.”
“That’s strange. Do you mind opening it again? I’d like to see the
bolts.”
The General, nothing loath, turned the key and pulled open the huge
door. Jack looked at the square, steel bolts--they were absolutely
new.
“I can’t understand how he offered it for sixty. You certainly had a
bargain for thirty, sir,” he said.
“I think I have,” said the General complacently. “By the way, I am
expecting a man to dinner to-night,” he went on, as he led the way
back to the drawing-room, “a doctor man from
Yorkshire--Barclay-Seymour. Do you know him?”
Jack did not know him, but the girl broke in--
“Oh, yes, he is quite an old friend of mine.”
“He’s rather a fool,” said the General, adopting his simple method of
classification.
Edith smiled.
“You told me yesterday that there were only two classes of people,
General--rogues and fools. I am wondering,” she said demurely, “in
which class you place me.”
The old man wrinkled his brows. He looked at the beautiful young face
in his high good humour.
“I must make a new class for you,” he said. “No, you shall be in a
class by yourself. But since most women are fools----”
“Oh, come!” she protested, laughingly.
“They are,” he averred. “Look at me. If women weren’t fools shouldn’t
I have had a wife? If any brilliant, ingenious lady, possessed of the
necessary determination had pursued me and had cultivated me, I should
not be a bachelor, leaving my money to people who don’t care
two--pins,” he hastily substituted a milder phrase for the one he had
intended, “whether I’m alive or dead. Does your husband know the
Doctor, by the way?”
The girl shook her head.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “They nearly met one night at dinner,
but Gilbert had an engagement.”
“But Gilbert knows him,” insisted the old man. “I’ve often talked to
him about Barclay-Seymour, who, by the way, is perhaps not such a fool
as most doctors. I used to be rather more enthusiastic about him than
I have been lately,” he admitted, “and I’m afraid I used to ram old
Barclay-Seymour down poor Gilbert’s throat more than his ability or
genius justified me doing. Has he never spoken about him?”
The girl shook her head.
“Ungrateful devil!” growled the old General inconsequently.
One of his many footmen came into the drawing-room at that moment with
a telegram on a salver.
“Hey hey?” demanded Sir John, fixing his glasses on the tip of his
nose and scowling up at his servant. “What’s this?”
“A telegram, Sir John,” replied the footman.
“I can see it’s a telegram, you ass! When did it come?”
“A few minutes ago, sir.”
“Who brought it?”
“A telegraph boy, Sir John,” said the imperturbable servitor.
“Why didn’t you say so at first?” snapped Sir John Standerton in a
tone of relief. And Edith had all she could do to prevent herself from
bursting into a fit of laughter at the little scene.
The old man opened the telegram, spread it out, read it slowly and
frowned. He read it again.
“Now, what on earth does that mean?” he asked, and handed the telegram
to the girl.
She read--
“Take the Standerton jewels out of your safe and deposit them without
fail in your bank to-night. If it is too late to send them to your
bank place them under an armed guard.”
It was signed “Gilbert Standerton.”
CHAPTER XV.
THE TALE THE DOCTOR TOLD
The General read the telegram again. He was, despite his erratic
temperament, a shrewd and intelligent man.
“What does that mean?” he asked quietly for him. “Where is Gilbert?
And where does he wire from?”
He picked up the telegram and inspected it. It was handed in at the
General Post Office at London at 6.35 p.m.
The General’s hour for dining was consonant with his breakfast hour,
and it was a quarter after nine when the dinner gong brought Edith
Standerton down from her room.
She was worried; she could not understand the reference to the jewels.
What had made Gilbert send this message? Had she known more of the
circumstances of what had happened on the previous afternoon she would
have wondered rather how he was able to send the message.
The General took the warning seriously, but not so seriously that he
was prepared to remove his jewellery to any other receptacle. Indeed,
the purchase of the safe had been made necessary by the fact that
beyond the butler’s strong room, which was strong only in an
etymological sense, there was no security for property of any value.
He had made an inspection of the jewels in the safe and had relocked
the door, leaving a servant in the library, with strict instructions
not to come out until he was instructed to leave by his master.
Edith came down to find that another guest had arrived, a guest who
greeted her with a cheery and familiar smile.
“How do you do, Doctor?” she said. “It is not so long since I met you
at mother’s. You remember me?”
“I remember you perfectly,” said Dr. Barclay-Seymour.
He was a tall, thin man with a straggling iron-grey beard and a high
forehead.
A little absent in his manner, he conveyed the impression, never a
very flattering one, that he had matters more weighty to think about
than the conversation which was being addressed to him. He was,
perhaps, the most noteworthy of the provincial doctors. He came out of
his shell sufficiently to recognise her and to remember her mother.
Mrs. Cathcart had been a great friend of Barclay’s. They had grown up
together.
“Your mother is a very wonderful woman,” said Dr. Barclay-Seymour as
he took the girl in to dinner, “a remarkable woman.”
Edith was seized with an almost overwhelming temptation to ask why. It
would have been unpardonable of her had she done so, but never did a
word so tremble upon a human being’s lips as that upon hers.
They ate through dinner, which was made a little uncomfortable by the
fact that General Sir John Standerton was unquestionably nervous.
Twice during the course of the meal he sent out one of the three
footmen who waited at table to visit what he termed the outpost.
Nothing untoward had happened on either occasion.
“I do not know what to do about this jewellery. I hope that Gilbert is
not playing the fool,” he said.
He turned to Edith with a genial scowl.
“Has he developed any kittenish ways of late?”
She smiled.
“There is no word which less describes Gilbert than kittenish,” she
said.
“Is it not remarkable that he sent that message?” the General went on
testily. “I hardly know what to do. I could get a constable up, but
the police here are the most awful and appalling idiots. I have a
great mind to have my bed put in the library and sleep there myself.”
He brightened up at the thought.
He had reached the stage in life when sleeping in any other room than
that to which he was accustomed represented a form of heroism. After
the dinner was through they made their way to the drawing-room.
The General was fidgety, and though Edith played and sang a little
French love song with no evidence of agitation, she was as nervous as
the General.
“I tell you what we will do,” said Sir John suddenly, “we will all
adjourn to the library. It is a jolly nice room if you do not mind our
smoking.”
It was an excellent suggestion, and one that she accepted with
pleasure. She was the only lady of the party, and remarked on the fact
as she went upstairs with Sir John.
He glanced hurriedly round.
“I always regard a doctor as a fit chaperone for any lady,” he said
with a chuckle--it amused him.
Later he found the complement of the joke, and discoursed loudly upon
old women of all professions, a discourse which was arrested by the
arrival of the Doctor and Jack Frankfort.
The library was a big room, and it was chiefly remarkable for the fact
that it contained no more evidence of Sir John’s literary taste than a
number of volumes of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ and a shelf full
of _Ruff’s Guide to the Turf_. It was, however, a delightful room,
panelled in old oak with mullioned windows standing in deep recesses.
These, explained Sir John, opened out on to a terrace--an excellent
reason for his apprehension.
“Pull the curtain, William,” said Sir John to the waiting footman,
“and then you can clear out. Have the coffee brought in here.”
The man pulled the heavy velvet curtains across the big recesses,
placed a chair for the girl, and retired.
“Excuse me,” said Sir John.
He went across to the safe and opened it again. He inspected the case.
Nothing had been disturbed.
“Ah,” he breathed--It was a sigh of infinite relief.
“This wire of Gilbert’s is getting on my nerves,” he excused himself
irritably. “What the devil did he wire for? Is he the sort of man that
sends telegrams to save himself the bother of licking down an
envelope?”
Edith shook her head.
“I am as much in the dark as you,” she said, “but I assure you that
Gilbert is not an alarmist.”
“How do you get on with him?” he asked her.
The girl flushed a little.
“I get on very well,” she said, and strove to turn the conversation.
But it was a known fact that no human soul had ever turned Sir John
from his set inquisitional course.
“Happy, and that sort of thing?” he asked.
Edith nodded, keeping her eyes on the wall behind the General’s head.
“I suppose you love him--hey?”
Edith was embarrassed, and no less so were the two men; but Sir John
was not alone in imagining that doctors have little sense of decency
and lawyers no idea of propriety. They were saved further discussion
by the arrival of the coffee, and the girl was thankful.
“I am going to keep you here until Gilbert comes up for you,” said the
old man suddenly. “I suppose you know, but probably you do not, that
you are the first of your sex that I have ever tolerated in my house.”
She laughed.
“It is a fact,” he said seriously. “You know I do not get on with
women. They do not realise that though I am an irritable old chap
there is really no harm in me, and I _am_ an irritable old chap,” he
confessed. “It is not that they are impertinent or rude, but it is
their long-suffering meekness that I cannot stand. If a lady tells me
to go to the devil I know where I am. I want the plain, blunt truth
without gaff. I prefer my medicine without sugar.”
The Doctor laughed.
“You are different from most people, Sir John. I know men who are
rather sensitive about the brutal truth.”
“More fools they,” said Sir John.
“I do not know,” said the Doctor reflectively. “I sympathise with a
man who does not want the whole bitterness of fact hurled at his head
in the shape of an honest half a brick, although there is an advantage
in knowing the truth sometimes, it saves a lot of needless
unhappiness,” he added a little sadly. He seemed to have aroused some
unpleasant train of thought. “I will give you an extraordinary
instance,” he went on in his usual deliberate manner.
“What’s that?” asked the General suddenly.
“I think it was a noise in the hall,” said Edith.
“I thought it was a window,” growled the General, rather ashamed that
he should have been detected in his jump.
“Go on with your story, Doctor.”
“A few months ago,” Dr. Seymour recalled, “a young man came to me. He
was a gentleman, and evidently not a townsman of Leeds, at any rate I
did not know him. I found afterwards that he had come from London to
consult me. He had some little tooth trouble, a jagged molar, a very
commonplace thing, and he had made a slight incision in the inside of
his mouth. Apparently it worried him, the more so when he discovered
that the tiny scratch would not heal. Like most of us, he had a
terrible dread of cancer.” He lowered his voice as a doctor often will
when he speaks of this most dreadful malady. “He did not want to go to
his own doctor; as a matter of fact, I do not think he had one. He
came to me, and I examined him. I had my doubt as to there being
anything wrong with him, but I cut a minute section of the membrane
for microscopic examination.”
The girl shivered.
“I am sorry,” said the Doctor hastily, “that is all there is in the
story which is gruesome unless you think---- However,” he went on, “I
promised to send him the result of my examination, and I wanted his
address to send it. This, however, he refused. He was very, very
nervous. ‘I know I am a moral coward,’ he said, ‘but somehow I do not
want to know just the bare truth in bald language; but if it is as I
fear, I would like the news broken to me in the manner which is the
least jarring to me.’”
“And what was that?” asked Sir John, interested in spite of himself.
The Doctor drew a long breath.
“It seems,” he said, “that he was something of a musician”--Edith sat
upright, clasping her hands, her face set, her eyes fixed upon the
Doctor--“he was something of a musician, that is to say, he was very
keen on music, and the method he had of breaking the news to himself
was unique, I have never heard anything quite like it before in my
life. He gave me two cards and an addressed envelope, addressed to an
old musician in London whom he patronised.”
Edith saw the room go swaying round and round, but held herself in
with an effort. Her face was white, her hands that held the chair were
clenched so tightly that the bones shone white through them.
“They were addressed to an old friend of his, as I say, and they were
identically worded with this exception. One of them said in effect you
will go to such and such a place and you will play the ‘Melody in F,’
and the other gave the same instructions but varied to this extent,
that he was to play the ‘Spring Song.’ Now here comes the tragedy.” He
raised his finger. “He gave me the ‘Melody in F’ to signal to him the
fact that he had cancer.”
There was a long silence, which only the quick breathing of the girl
broke.
“And, and--?” whispered Edith.
“And”--the Doctor looked at her with his far-away eyes--“I sent the
wrong card,” he said. “I sent it and destroyed the other before I
remembered my error.”
“Then he has not cancer?” whispered the girl.
“No, and I do not know his address, and I cannot get at him,” said
Barclay-Seymour. “It was tragic in many ways. I think he was just
going to marry, for he said this much to me: ‘If this is true, and I
am married, I will leave my wife a pauper,’ and he asked me a curious
question,” added the Doctor. “He said, ‘Don’t you think that a man
condemned to die is justified in taking any action, committing any
crime, for the protection of the loved ones he leaves behind?’”
“I see,” said Edith.
Her voice was hollow and sounded remote to her.
“What is that?” said the General, and jumped up.
This time there was no doubt. Jack Frankfort sprang to the curtain
that covered the recess and pulled it aside. There stood Gilbert
Standerton, white as a ghost, his eyes staring into vacancy, the hand
at his mouth shaking.
“The wrong card!” he said. “My God!”
CHAPTER XVI.
BRADSHAW
A month later Gilbert Standerton came back from the Foreign Office
to his little house in St. John’s Wood.
“There is a man to see you, Gilbert,” said his wife.
“I think I know, it is my bank manager,” he said.
He greeted the tall man who rose to meet him with a cheery smile.
“Now, Mr. Brown,” he said, “I have to explain to you exactly what I
want done. There is a man in America, he has been there some week or
two, to whom I owe a large sum of money--eighty thousand pounds, to be
exact--and I want you to see that I have sufficient fluent capital to
pay it.”
“You have quite sufficient, Mr. Standerton,” said the manager, “even
now, without selling any of your securities.”
“That is good. You will have all the particulars here,” said Gilbert,
and took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. “It is really a
trust, in the sense that it is to be transferred to two men, Thomas
Black and George Smith. They may sub-divide it again, because I
believe,” he smiled, “they have other business associates who happen
to be entitled to share.”
“I did not congratulate you, Mr. Standerton,” said the bank manager,
“upon the marvellous service you rendered the city. They say that
through you every penny which was stolen by the famous Wallis gang has
been recovered.”
“I think that pretty well described the position,” said Gilbert
quietly.
“I was reading an account of it in a paper the other day,” the bank
manager went on. “It was very providential that there was an alarm of
fire next door to their headquarters.”
“It was providential that it was found before the fire reached the
Safe Company’s premises,” said Gilbert. “Fortunately the firemen saw
me through the skylight. That made things rather easy, but it was some
time before they got me out, as you probably know.”
“Did you ever see this man Wallis?” asked the bank manager curiously.
“Didn’t the papers tell you that?” bantered Gilbert with a dry smile.
“They say you learnt in some way that there was to be a burglary at
your uncle’s, and that you went up to his place, and there you saw Mr.
Wallis under the very window of the library, on the parapet or
something.”
“On the terrace it was,” said Gilbert quietly.
“And that he flew at the sight of you?”
“That is hardly true,” said Gilbert, “rather put it that I persuaded
him to go. I was not sure that he had not already secured the
necklace, and I went through the window into the room without
realising there was anybody there. You see, there were heavy curtains
which hid the light. Whilst I was there he escaped, that is all.”
He made one or two suggestions regarding the transfer of the money and
showed the bank manager out, then he joined Edith in the drawing-room.
She came to him with a little smile.
“Does the Foreign Office seem very strange to you?” she asked.
“It did seem rather strange after my other exploits.”
He laughed.
“I never thought Sir John had sufficient influence to get you back.”
“I think he has greater influence than you imagine,” he said; “but
then there were other considerations. You see, I was able to render
the Foreign Office one or two little acts of service in the course of
my nefarious career, and they have been very good.”
She looked at him wistfully.
“And do we go back now to where we started?” she asked.
“Where did we start?” he countered.
“I do not know that we started anywhere,” she said thoughtfully.
She had been looking at a time table when he came into the room, and
now she picked it up and turned the pages idly.
“Are you interested in that Bradshaw?”
“Very,” she said. “I am just deciding.”
“Deciding what?” he asked.
“Where--where we shall spend our honeymoon,” she faltered.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
The J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd. (1915) edition was consulted for many of
the changes listed below.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ dressing gown/dressing-gown,
lifelong/life-long, upkeep/up-keep, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Merge disjointed contractions.
Punctuation: several missing commas and periods, and some quotation
mark pairings.
[Chapter II]
Change (“Have you told Mrs. _Carthcart_ this?” he asked.) to
_Cathcart_.
“when his _wordly_ prospects had seemed much brighter than” to
_worldly_.
[Chapter V]
“had shown extraordinary knowledge of the _safes’_ contents” to
_safe’s_.
[Chapter VI]
“The _Manager_ himself never quite understood how his chief” to
_manager_.
[Chapter VIII]
“suggested Mr. Warrell, with his eyes _stil_ upraised” to _still_.
“I will let you know how it _developes_” to _develops_.
[Chapter IX]
“Was very _absent minded_ and worried apparently.” to
_absent-minded_.
(“Perhaps you would like to go,” he had suggested. briefly. “I am)
delete the first period.
[Chapter X]
“never failed to excite great, interest” delete the comma.
“the abstract problem of the _chureh_” to _church_.
[Chapter XI]
“there are _lot_ of little things I might be able to discover.” to
_lots_.
[End of text]
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