Old Doctor Thompson sat up in his study, smoking and listening to his
nephew's theories anent Victor Mercier's death, while Vera, sleepless in
her anguish, remained sifting her suspicions throughout that dismal
night, limply leaning up against the sealed door which so cruelly barred
her out from that silent room where her beloved lay on the sofa in the
mystic sleep of death. "I have to revenge his murder--for he has been
drugged--poisoned--I could swear it!" she told herself, over and over
again. "That woman I saw--tall, well-dressed--stalking off--and
staggering--she is the one who has killed him! It is she I must
find--God help me!"
How impotent she felt, when all Mercier's belongings were under lock,
key, and seal!
But she had enough to occupy her. The unhappy old mother was in a
helpless state of grief--she alone had to "do for the household," since
they kept no regular servant. Then, when she sent in her resignation,
her admirer, the stage manager, Mr. Howard, urged the proprietors of the
touring company to refuse to accept it. She had to go off and almost
beg release upon her knees.
Then came the day of the inquest, and her statement; the grudgingly
admitted verdict, and the consequent release from endurance of the worst
of the bondage.
The purses of gold were all that they found which pointed to any one's
visit the night of Mercier's death; and even Vera, despite her intense
anxiety to find a clue which would bring her face to face with the wife
he had told her of, the "hag," the "cat," whom he had spoken of so
vindictively as the only barrier between them, could but think that the
money might have been locked up in his desk since his return. He had
spoken of possessing ample means for the immediate present, and had
spent lavishly upon her of late.
They searched high and low, the poor mother clinging to the relics of
the only son whose heir she was, as she had few relatives belonging to
her, and his father, her first, cruel spouse, had no kith and kin that
he had cared to acknowledge. But while they found more money--neither
in boxes, nor chests of drawers, or pockets, did they come across any
traces bearing upon the part of his life they knew nothing about. The
letters and papers in his desk and trunk related to past business
abroad, alone.
The funeral was a plain, but good one. It was a wet, gloomy day when
the hearse bearing the brown oaken coffin decorated with wreaths bought
lavishly by Vera, and a few modest ones sent by the doctor's wife and
some sympathizing neighbours, made its way slowly through the gaping
crowd in Haythorn Street and the immediate neighbourhood, and proceeded
more briskly northwards. Vera sat back in the first of the two funeral
carriages--the two doctors were in the second--and as she vainly strove
to comfort her weeping old step-mother, she gazed sternly out upon the
familiar roads with a strange wonder at the ordinary bustle and
movement. Life was going on as usual, although Victor Mercier's strong,
buoyant spirit was quenched. They laughed and talked and screamed and
whistled, those crowds, while he lay still and white within his narrow
coffin under the flowers, his pale lips sealed for ever in that strange,
wistful, unearthly smile.
"But they have not heard the last of him," she grimly thought. "The
last will be far, far more startling than the first!"
Let him be laid to rest, and she would rouse like a sleeping tigress
awakened to the defence of her young, and finding that wife of his,
bring her to justice.
The belief that that woman had secretly visited him, and that by her
means he had had his death-dose, strengthened every moment until it
became a rigid, fixed idea. All had seemed to point to it. His careful
dress to receive his visitor, the embroidered shirt, the diamond stud,
the white flower in his button-hole, a costume assumed after she had
left him in his ordinary day suit. Then his shutting the cat into the
parlour was doubtless lest she should cover his visitor with her
hairs--and the cat only affected women, and had a trick of jumping up on
feminine laps.
"There is justice in heaven, so I shall find some clue to her," thought
she, as they passed the stone-mason's yards on the cemetery road. The
words haunted her--"Vengeance is Mine! I will repay, saith the Lord."
They should be inscribed on his tomb.
Presently the horses slackened in their speed--they proceeded at a
funeral pace--then they stopped. They were at the cemetery gates. Vera
heard the distant tolling of the bell. It had been like this when her
own father was buried, in whose grave for two Victor was to lie.
"I must bear up," said the aged woman who leant against her, with a
gasping sob. "Victor would not like to see me cry." And she tried to
give a broken-hearted smile.
"No, mother," said the girl tenderly. But she was not really
touched--it was as if her heart were turned to stone.
The funeral train went on with a jerk. A returning empty hearse
scampering home the wrong way had been the temporary obstruction.
Graves, rows of crosses and headstones--ponderous marble and granite
tombs--the world of the dead was a well-peopled one. They halted--one of
the solemn undertaker's men came and let down the steps. There was the
coffin--
The beautiful words fell unheeded on Vera's ears. She was intent upon a
small, pale man with fair hair, in black, who had joined them. Who was
he? Was he the intimate friend Victor had casually spoken of?
As they stood in the narrow pews of the mortuary chapel, the first ray
of sunshine which had pierced the clouds that day fell upon the
close-cut hair of Paul Naz, who had determined not only to see the last
of the friend anent whose fate he had such gruesome, horrible
misgivings, but to offer his friendship to the charming young actress
whom he now knew to have been more to the dead man than mere
step-sister-in-law; and Vera said to herself, "It is an omen!"
As they stepped slowly out, following the coffin, she almost staggered
as she vainly tried to support her half-fainting step-mother. Paul Naz
helped her with a "Pardon, mademoiselle! I am his friend!" and she gave
him a grateful glance.
They were at the grave. The clergyman was reading "He cometh up, and is
cut down like a flower--" ... A thrush carolled loudly on a neighbouring
bush. The sunlight broke through and shone upon the brass handles of
the coffin as it was lowered into the grave. "My beloved, I will only
live to avenge you, and take care of mother," murmured Vera, as she left
the grave, and following her stepmother, who leant on Paul Naz's arm,
listened to his affectionate talk of the dead man.
"I loved him, mademoiselle! And if I can help you, I beg you to send to
me!" he said, earnestly, giving her a meaning, almost appealing look
after he had helped Victor's mother into the carriage. Then he stood,
bare-headed, and gravely watched them depart.
"He suspects!" Vera told herself, feverishly, as they drove home.
"Perhaps--oh, if it only is so! He knows something!"
Back in the empty house, she coaxed her step-mother to bed, and was
proceeding to give orders to the charwoman about the tidying-up of the
place, when there was a vigorous pull of the bell.
"I will see to it," she said to the woman. Proceeding to the hall-door
and opening it, she was confronted with the landlady of the next-door
lodging-house--a Mrs. Muggeridge, whose fowls had been harassed by the
tortoise-shell cat, after which there had been ructions, and each house
had cut its neighbour dead.
"I am sure I don't wish to hurt your feelings, or to intrude, Miss
Anerley, but my mind is that troubled I must speak to you," said the old
woman, who was stout and asthmatic, and looked pale and "upset." "I
hope your poor mar is all right?"
"Yes, thanks! Will you come this way?" said Vera, who felt somewhat as
a war-horse hearing the bugle, for she hoped to "hear something," and
she conducted her visitor into the little parlour and closed the door.
Mrs. Muggeridge pantingly, with many interpolations, told her tale. She
had a country girl as servant, "Sar' Ann, as good a gal as ever lived."
Still, it seemed that Sar' Ann was human, and could err. The day after
the murder, "as they did call it, and as some calls it now, in spite of
that there crowner, Sar' Ann was took with hysterics, and giv' warnin'."
"Which I took. As I says to Sar' Ann, 'I don't want any one 'ere as
ain't comfortable.' And she was right down awful, that girl was. One
night I took and made 'er tell me what it was, and I'm goin' to tell
you, now! For the very mornin' after--I suppose because I told her what
she said to me she might have to tell to a Judge and jury, she ran away.
She got the milkman to give a lift to her box, and when I got up,
expectin' to find the kettle boilin', she was off and away into
space--and there she is--like one of them Leonines as they talk of, but
we never sees, Miss Anerley! It'll take a detective to find her, if so
be as she should be called up to say what she says to me!"