THESE WOMEN
“I’m sorry to have brought you down to this very unpretentious
little flat of mine,” said Leslie, “but I have discovered in myself
some of the qualities of a showman, and really and truly, most of the
documents and proofs I have are here.”
And then she laughed, rocking from side to side in her chair.
“What is the joke?” asked Coldwell suspiciously.
“You look so like Christy minstrels, all sitting round in a circle
with your hands on your knees, and it’s three o’clock in the morning,
and--there are a dozen reasons why I should laugh. I’ll begin at the
beginning; shall I?
“I suppose everybody knows how I worked up an interest in this case,
through finding a book of poems in a little Cumberland farmhouse, and
how I put two and several together, made them four, guessed them six,
and finally proved their real quantity beyond doubt.
“There was a family living in Devonshire named Druze.”
Briefly she retailed all that the clergyman had told her, and all she
had learned from subsequent inquiries.
“Annie Druze was in reality Anita. Alice was Arthur Druze, and Martha,
the younger of the two, eventually became Mrs. Dawlish. The three
girls were very staunch friends. They had made some sort of compact in
their childhood to stand together through thick and thin and that is
the only creditable aspect of their subsequent careers. Annie went
abroad as a lady’s maid, and scraped an acquaintance in some way with
an impecunious scion of an Italian family and married him. Martha had
a training in a hospital, became a maternity nurse, and was
subsequently called in to nurse Peter’s mother with her first child.
“Alice, the middle sister, joined her sister in Java, where the prince
had taken some minor position. I have had a long talk with Martha, and
she tells me that Alice Druze became Arthur Druze as the result of a
masquerade. She went one night to a fancy-dress ball dressed as a man,
and nobody guessed her identity. The possibility may have occurred to
Anita, as she had become, that in this guise her sister would be of
use to her, for there is little question that even so long ago Anita
was engaged in blackmail.
“There is proof that she blackmailed a government official of Java,
and there is the record of a complaint made to the English police in
’89 when she returned to this country, from the wife of one of her
victims. And she did not stop at blackmail. Martha--who, to save her
own skin, has betrayed everybody--says that she had forged three bills
of exchange to her knowledge. It is established that it was Anita who
forged Lord Everreed’s signature, and, taking advantage of Peter being
out of the way, got Druze to cash the check, the proceeds of which
were divided between the two sisters. Whether she did this out of
sheer wickedness and with Martha’s knowledge in order to ruin Peter,
or whether she was in low water, I cannot discover. Martha suggests
the latter reason and swears that she knew nothing about the forgery
until later. I have my own opinion.
“Anita was distantly acquainted with Jane before Peter knew her, but
she did not become interested in her until after her marriage and
return to England. The arrest of Peter coincided with Anita’s learning
that Lord Raytham, a very rich man, was anxious to marry Jane, who in
some mysterious fashion had disappeared. Anita guessed the cause and
went in search of and found her. She learned of Jane’s condition and
kept by her, her object being to persuade her to marry Raytham, so
that she might profitably exploit the new Lady Raytham. She tried to
persuade Jane that her marriage wasn’t legal, hoping that the girl in
her desperation would commit bigamy and be under her thumb for the
rest of her life. But Jane made one desperate attempt to free herself
from the marriage. She went to Reno, applied for a divorce, and that
divorce was granted.”
“Granted?” Jane’s voice was shrill, almost a scream. “It was not
granted, Leslie; it was refused!”
“It was granted. Your decree was made absolute. I have a cablegram
from the clerk of the court to that effect; it arrived last night.
Naturally, Anita did her best to prevent the divorce, because, if it
were given, she had practically no hold except the child, which was
subsequently taken away by her sister and handed to Mrs. Inglethorne,
who for four years was in Martha’s employment. When she found she
couldn’t stop the divorce, she induced Jane to go out of court while
the judge was giving his decision. Her car was waiting at the door of
the court, and Jane was sitting in it, waiting for the verdict. It was
not until Anita came out of court and joined her in the car that Jane
learned that the divorce had been refused. She married Raytham,
believing that she was a bigamist, and yet finding poor sort of
comfort in the belief that there had been some sort of irregularity in
her marriage which made it invalid.
“For seven years Jane Raytham has been paying toll to the blackmailer,
supposedly the man who had charge of the child, in reality to Anita
Bellini and her sister.
“Immediately after her return from America, Jane went to Appledore,
her time being very near at hand. It was then that Martha was called
in, and the poor girl learned that her white-aproned nurse was the
terrible Mrs. Dawlish whom Peter hated and feared. This was the
beginning of Jane’s time of torment which endured until a week ago.
Then Druze, as I will call her, got scared. I think I was the person
responsible. My inquiries about the twenty thousand pounds that had
been drawn from Jane’s bank, information which came to Scotland Yard
in quite a normal way, frightened her and she decided to go abroad,
getting as much money as she possibly could before she left.
“Jane gave her her emerald chain, and with this Druze went off to
interview her sister. There was some little quarrel as to the division
of the spoils. Anita, who was the stronger of the two, snatched the
chain from her sister’s hands, never expecting that the woman,
infuriated with drink and anger, carried a pistol. In the struggle
which followed, Druze was shot, but in some miraculous fashion still
retained her hold of the square emerald. I can only imagine that Anita
was so beside herself with grief that she did not make a search. In a
panic she had the body put in the car and taken to the lonely spot and
left there. But new clues were coming to light every day. Mrs.
Inglethorne reported the presence of Peter Dawlish in her house and
his interest in the child. Imagining that he suspected who Elizabeth
was, and that his coming to Severall Street was designed, she had the
little girl taken to Wimbledon, and concentrated all her mind upon
getting rid of my unworthy self. For in me she thought she saw her
chief enemy, and I think she was right.
“And that,” said Leslie simply, “is that!”
Mr. Coldwell got up stiffly and stretched himself.
“I’m going home to bed. It’s very unlikely that you will be troubled
by the little yellow boys, and I think I can leave you and your
Lucretia here without any misgivings. I don’t know how this is going
to look in court, or who will be brought into the case and who will
not, but those things are the little unpleasantnesses which you will
have to live through and live down.”
Jane knew he was addressing her and smiled.
“I can live everything down,” she said, “and live through everything,
if somebody will let that little yellow head sleep on my pillow now
and again.”
She walked across to Peter and held out her hand.
“I don’t know whether I’m glad about the divorce,” she said. “I think
I am. And I hope you are, Peter.”
She cast a swift sidelong glance toward Leslie, who was arranging her
papers at the desk, and dropped her voice still lower.
“Do you think somebody else is glad?” she asked.
“I hope so,” said Peter, and for the first and last time Jane Raytham
felt a little twinge that had a remote resemblance to jealousy.
It was gone in a second.
“Come and see me to-morrow; I want to arrange things for--our family.”
And when his lips twitched, she said:
“That smile was almost paternal.”
They were all gone at last except Peter and Leslie, and Lucretia,
washing up noisily in the scullery, her door half open to insure the
proprieties.
“Well?” asked Leslie.
“Very well--bewilderingly well.”
“I told you about Mrs. Dawlish and what she intends to do?”
He nodded.
“You can, of course, charge her with being privy to the forgery, but I
think it was Anita’s work. It will be so much better if you allow her
to pass the property to you by deed of gift. That makes you a very
rich man, Peter. What are you going to do with it? Buy a house in Park
Lane?”
“Would you like a house in Park Lane?” he asked.
“I’d like almost any kind of house, Peter,” she said quietly.
Lucretia, looking through the half-opened door, saw the brown head of
her mistress pillowed on Peter’s shabby jacket, saw him bend his head
and kiss her.
Lucretia sneered.
“My stars!” she said, addressing nobody in particular. “These women!”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. drawing-room/drawing room,
motor-car/motor car, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Abandon the use of drop-caps.
Punctuation: fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings, and some
missing/invisible periods.
[Chapter XXI]
Change “The back was _undoubted y_ a door” to _undoubtedly_.
[Chapter XXIV]
“When she found she _couldn t_ stop… court _wh le_ the judge” to
_couldn’t_ and _while_, respectively.
[End of text]