COMING NEAR
As for Henry Van Hupfeldt, he, too, at that morning hour lay awake in
his bed. If ever man knew panic, it was he all that night. He had gone
home from his interview with Violet, cringing in his carriage even from
the glance of the passers in the streets, stricken to the heart by that
unsigned note of David's to Violet: "A pretty certain thing that your
sister was a duly wedded wife" ... "the proofs of it will be
forthcoming." Some one knew!
But who? And how? Van Hupfeldt locked himself away from his valet--he
lived in chambers near Hanover Square--and for hours sat without a
movement, staring the stare of the hopeless and the lost. The fact that
he had as good as won from Violet the pledging of herself to him--that
fact which at another time would have filled him with elation, was now
almost forgotten in the darkness of his calamity, as a star is swallowed
up by clouds. The thing was known! That known which had been between the
chamber of his heart and God alone! A bird of the air had whispered it,
another soul shared in its horror. The faintest hiss of a wish to commit
murder came from between his teeth. He had meant well, and ill had
come; but because he had meant not badly and had struggled hard with
fate, let no man dare to meddle! He could be flint against the steel of
a man.
His eyes, long bereft of sleep, closed of themselves at last, and he
threw himself upon his bed. But the pang which pierces the sleep of the
condemned criminal soon woke him. He opened his eyes with a clearer
mind, and set to thinking. The unsigned note to Violet was in a man's
hand. Some nights before in the cemetery he had found a man near the
grave with her, and the man had seemed to be talking with her, a young,
sunburned man. Who he was he had no idea; he had no reason to think this
was the man who had sent the note. There was left only Miss L'Estrange.
She might have sent it, getting a man to write for her--suspicion of
itself fixed upon her. Always he had harbored this fear, that some
paper, something to serve as a clue, had been left in the flat, which
would lie hidden for a time, and then come forth into the noonday to
undo him utterly. Gwendoline, he knew, had wished to screen him; but the
chances were against him. He had never dared to go into the flat alone,
to take the flat in his own name, and search it inside out. The place
was haunted by a light step, and a sigh was in the air which no other
ear could hear, but which his ear would hear without fail. Within those
walls his eyes one night had seen a sight!
He had not dared to take the place; but he had put Miss L'Estrange into
it, and she had failed him; so, suspecting at last that she did not
search according to the bargain, he had threatened to stop supplies, in
order merely to spur her to search, for his heart had always foreboded
that there was something to find.
Gwen, he knew, had kept a diary. Where was that? His photographs, where
were they? His last letter to her? The certificates? Had they all been
duly destroyed by her? Had she forgotten nothing? But when he had
attempted to spur L'Estrange, the woman had flown into a fury, and he
had allowed himself to lose his temper. How bitter now was his remorse
at this folly! He ought to have kept some one in perpetuity in the flat,
till all fear of anything lying hidden in it was past. He suspected now
that L'Estrange might have found some document, and had kept it from him
through his not being well in her favor during the last weeks of her
residence. He groaned aloud at this childishness of his. It was his
business to have kept in touch with her, to have made her rich. But it
was not too late.
So, on the following evening, he presented himself at the stage-door of
the theater where Miss Ermyn L'Estrange was then displaying her charms,
in his hand an _ecrin_ containing a _riviere_ of diamonds. He said not
one word about his motive for coming to her after so long, but put out
an every-day hand, as if no dispute had been between them.
"Well, this is a surprise!" said she. "What's the game now?"
"No game," said he, assuming the necessary jauntiness. "Should old
acquaintance be forgot?" They drove together to the Cafe Royal.
"It was just as I tell you," she explained in the cab, driving later to
Chelsea. "I never saw one morsel of any paper until that last day, when
the two certificates dropped out of the picture, and them I wouldn't
give you because of the tiff. I'm awfully sorry now that I didn't," she
glanced down at the _riviere_ on her palm; "but there, it's done, and
can't be undone--nature of the beast, I s'pose."
"And you really think Jenny has them? Are you sure, now? Are you sure?"
asked Van Hupfeldt, earnestly.
"That's my honest belief," she answered. "I think I remember tossing
them to Jenny, and as Jenny knew that I had gone into the flat specially
to search for papers for you, she must have said to herself: 'These
papers may be just what have been wanted, and they'll be worth their
weight in gold to me, if I can find Mr. Strauss.' No doubt she's been
looking for you ever since, or waiting for you to turn up. When I said
to her yesterday: 'What about those two papers that dropped out of the
picture at Eddystone Mansions?' she turned funny, and couldn't catch her
breath. 'Which two papers, miss?' she says. 'Oh, you go on,' I said to
her; 'you know very well. Those that dropped out of the picture that
fell down.'--'Yes,' said she, 'now I remember. I wonder what could
have become of them? Didn't you throw them into the fireplace, Miss
L'Estrange?'--'No, I didn't, Jenny,' I said to her, 'and a woman should
lie to a man, not to another woman; for it takes a liar to catch a
liar.'--'But what lie am I telling, Miss L'Estrange?' says she. 'I am
not sure,' I said, 'but I know that you ought to tie your nose with
string whenever you're telling a lie, for your nostrils keep opening
and shutting, same as they're doing now.'--'I didn't know that, I'm
sure,' says she. 'That's queer, too, if my nostrils are opening and
shutting.'--'It's only the truth,' I said to her; 'your mouth is
accustomed to uttering falsehood, and it doesn't mind, but when your
nostrils smell the lie coming out, they get excited, my girl.'--'Fancy!'
says she. 'That's funny!'--'So where's the use keeping it up, Jenny?' I
said to her. 'You do make me wild, for I know that you're lying, and you
know that I know, and yet you keep it up, as if I was a man, and didn't
know you. If you've got the papers, say so; you are perfectly welcome to
them, for I don't want to take them from you,' I said. 'Well, you seem
to know more than I do myself, miss,' she says. 'Oh, you get out!' I
said to her, and I pushed her by the shoulders out of the room. That's
all that passed between us."
"For what reason did you ask her about these papers yesterday in
particular?" demanded Van Hupfeldt, thickly, a pain gripping at his
heart.
"I'll tell you. The new tenant of the flat came to me--"
"Ah! the flat is let again?"
"What, didn't you know? He's only just moved in--a young man named David
Harcourt."
"And he came to you? What about?"
"Asking about papers--"
"Papers? What interest can he have in them? And you told him about the
certificates?"
"Yes."
"_Gott in Himmel!_"
"Why, what's the matter?"
"You told him about the certificates? Then it was he who wrote the
note!"
"Which note? Don't take on like that--in a cab!"
"You told him! Then it was he--it was he! How does he look, this young
man? What kind of young man?" Van Hupfeldt wanted to choke the woman as
she sat there beside him.
"Come, cheer up, pull yourself together; it will be all the same a
hundred years hence. I'm sure I didn't know that I was injuring you by
telling him, and even if I had known, I should still have told
him--there's nothing like being frank, is there? You and I weren't
pals--"
"But what is he like, this young man?"
"Not a bad sort, something like a Jameson raider, a merry, upstanding
fellow--"
"It was he who was at the grave with her!" whispered Van Hupfeldt to
himself, while his eyes seemed to see a ghost. "And you told him all,
all! It was he, no other. What name did you give him as that of the
husband on the marriage-lines? Did he ask that, too? Did you tell him?"
With a kind of crazy secrecy he asked it at her ear, panting for the
answer.
"I didn't remember the husband's name," she answered. "I told him it
wasn't Strauss, but van or von Something. And don't lean against me in
that way. People will think you are full."
"Van? You told him that? And what did he say then?"
"He asked if it wasn't van Something, I forget what, Van Hup--something.
I have an awful bad memory for names, and, look here, don't come
worrying me with your troubles, for I've got my own to look after."
Van Hupfeldt's finger-nails were pressed into the flesh of his palms.
This new occupier of the flat, then, even knew his name, even suspected
the identity of Strauss with Van Hupfeldt. How could he know it, except
from Violet? To the pains of panic in Van Hupfeldt was added a stab of
jealousy. That Violet knew this young man he no longer doubted, nor
doubted that the meeting at the grave was by appointment. Perhaps
Violet, eager to find suspected papers of her sister's, had even put
this man into the flat, just as he, Van Hupfeldt, had once put Miss
L'Estrange there. At all events, here was a man in the flat having some
interest or other in Violet and in Gwendoline's papers, with the name
Van Hupfeldt on his lips, and a suspicion that Van Hupfeldt was Strauss,
the evil genius of Gwendoline!
"But there must be no meddling in my life!" Van Hupfeldt whispered to
himself, with an evil eye that meant no good to David.
When the cab drew up before Miss L'Estrange's dwelling, she said: "You
can't come up, you know; it is much too late. And there isn't any need.
I will let Jenny go to you as early as you like in the morning if you
give me your address, or you can come yourself to-morrow--"
"Ah, don't be hard on me," he pleaded. "I mustn't lose a night. Send her
down to me, if I can't go up."
"Go on, the poor girl's asleep," she answered. "Where's the use in
carrying on like a loony? Can't you take it coolly?"
In the end he had to go without seeing Jenny, having left his card on
the understanding that she should be with him not later than ten in the
morning, and that Miss L'Estrange should keep his address an inviolable
secret.
The moment he was gone from her, Ermyn L'Estrange darted up the stairs,
as if to catch something, and, on entering her flat, tripped into her
bed-room, turned on the light, threw off her cloak, and put on the
necklace before her mirror. It was a fine affair, and no mistake, all
lights and colors playing bo-peep in the stones. She made a curtsy to
her image, inspected herself on every side, stepping this way and that,
daintily, like a peacock, keenly enjoying the gift, till the novelty of
possessing it was gone stale. But at no time did she feel any gratitude
to the giver, or think of him at all in connection with it--just the
fact of having it occupied her mind, it didn't matter whence.
And the mere knowledge that it was so valuable proved it to be a bribe,
pointed to a weakness in the giver. Some gifts to women, especially
splendid ones, produce not only no gratitude, but a certain hardness of
heart, contempt, and touch of enmity. Perhaps there is a feeling of "I
ought to be grateful," but being too happy to be grateful, they are
bored with a sense of fault, and for this they punish the giver with the
opposite of gratitude.
At all events, by the time Miss L'Estrange had taken off the string of
gems, a memory had grown up within her of David Harcourt, and with it
came a mild feeling of partizanship and liking for David as against
Strauss. It was a wayward machine, that she-heart under the bodice of
Miss Ermyn L'Estrange--wayward without motive, subtle without thought,
treacherous for treachery's sake. As a matter of fact, before waking
Jenny, it came into her head to "give a friendly tip" to David on the
ground that he was "not a bad sort," and she actually went out of her
way to send him a post-card, telling him that she had expected him to
call on Jenny that day, and that, if he meant business, he must see her
not later than half-past nine the next morning, or he would be too late.
What a web, this, which was being spun round the young adventurer from
Wyoming!