When Vansittart had spoken those awful words, in a light, almost
reassuring manner, "she kills him before the curtain falls on the last
act," Joan first felt as if her whole mental and physical being were
convulsed with a strange, almost unearthly, pain; then everything surged
around her, and threatened to sink away into blackness, blankness.
Good heavens, she was going to faint! With an effort of will she fought
against unconsciousness; gasped for breath, struggled to maintain her
senses, and was rewarded by coming slowly back out of the mists, and
seeing the plain, clever face of the dramatic critic appear opposite,
seemingly from nowhere. Then she heard that Vansittart was expressing
disapprobation of the play.
"I only happened to glance at the plot in your article in the
_Parthenon_ just before we came," he was saying. "It was the very last
kind of play I should have chosen for Miss Thorne to see had I known the
story."
"Indeed?" Mr. Hunt smiled, but Joan thought he gave her a suspicious,
enquiring look. It was enquiring; he was wondering whether this
beautiful girl were not the prey of some latent but awful disease--her
ghastliness, the expression of anguish on her face, was undeniably the
effect of some secret suffering. But Joan could not read his thoughts.
She was frightened into bravado.
"I certainly prefer comedies to tragedies," she hazarded, and there was
slight defiance in her glance at the dramatic critic. As for her voice,
she wondered if it sounded as unnatural in her lover's ears as in her
own. "A tragedy is such an exception in everyday life; and when it does
occur, one would rather not hear about it."
"You differ from the bulk of humanity, Miss Thorne," said Mr. Hunt, good
humouredly. "And I cannot agree with you that tragedy is such an
exceptional thing in ordinary existence. My own belief, and it is
shared by many others, is that the under-current of most lives has an
element of the tragic in it. There are scores of crimes, too, that
never come to light; myriads of unsuspected criminals. This I think is
shown to be the case by the interest the public have for what is called
the 'sensational.' They recognize instincts they possess themselves,
although those instincts may be undeveloped, or held in check."
"Hunt! You suggest that we are all of us potential murderers," said
Lord Vansittart, with an amused laugh.
Mr. Hunt shrugged his shoulders. "I suggest nothing; I assume a
Socratian attitude; I encourage others to suggest," he somewhat dryly
returned. "What do you think of this much-belauded actress, Miss
Thorne? I confess I am not infatuated, like the rest. She leaves me
utterly cold; hasn't the power to quicken my pulse by a single beat,
even in her most impassioned moments. I was wishing just now that the
part had been played by a little girl I saw for the first time the other
night--singularly enough, on the very night she became the heroine of a
tragedy in real life. You must have read about it, Vansittart. You are
not 'one who battens on offal?' I daresay not. Nor am I. I should not
have been so interested in this affair if I had not been mixed up in it,
and if a friend of mine were not destined, innocently enough, to become
one of the strands of the rope which will assuredly hang the murderer,
or, I should say, the murderess."
"Please, Hunt, don't let us talk of such horrible things," cried Lord
Vansittart. He had seen his darling shudder.
"Oh, pray go on!" said Joan, with a sudden mad effort to hear what there
was to hear without a shriek of agony. So--so--something more had been
discovered--was known.
"You have probably followed the case, Miss Thorne. There was the
romantic element in it which appeals to most ladies," said Mr. Hunt,
smiling at Joan. "Ah! I see; you know all about it. Well, to put it
as briefly as I can, I was urged to go and see the performance of a
young lady, a Miss Vera Anerley, who had made quite a commotion in the
provinces. Her company, a touring one, was coming to a suburban theatre
for a couple of weeks, and already the reporter of a London evening
paper had fallen a victim to her fascination. Well, I went, and I was
so astonished at the spontaneity of the girl, at the natural art which,
imitating nature, we call genius, that I asked to be introduced. She
refused; the manager said she must have a lover waiting round the
corner. True enough, she had a lover, but not waiting for her round the
corner, as it happened, but waiting for her at home, on the sofa, dead!
He was a bad lot, it seems, that Victor Mercier. You must have read the
case, Lord Vansittart, it was 'starred' a bit because of its association
with a girl rumour says is bound to make her mark, sooner or later. But
even if he was the blackest of black sheep, justice is justice. One
doesn't care for assassinations done in cold blood in the very heart of
civilized London. I know it was brought in 'death by misadventure';
some of those jurymen were the densest of idiots. But the ball has not
stopped rolling. As I said, a friend of mine has come into the case. I
must tell you; it is so odd; it so proves the old saying that 'truth is
stranger than fiction.' A fellow I know very well, one of your circle,
I fancy, went with me to see Vera Anerley act, but left me when I went
round to the stage door, and, finding it a fine night, elected to walk
home. As he was making his way westwards by Westminster Bridge, his
attention was attracted by a feminine figure in front, because, besides
being tall and well made, there was a _cachet_ of belonging to a smart
set about her, or he chose to think so. Then, every now and then the
girl tottered. Was she drunk? he thought. What was she doing there? He
followed her, and presently, seeing her peering here and there and
glancing furtively about, felt sure he was on the track of something
peculiar, especially when she flitted up some steps in the shadow,
stooped, and seemed to deposit something she was carrying in the corner.
"Of course he at once jumped to the conclusion that she had abandoned an
infant, living or dead. He naturally shied off being identified with a
discovery of that sort, so he, I think, if I remember rightly, did not
walk back, but waited for the first bobby that came along, and, telling
him who he was, related what he had seen. Well, of course, when instead
of a corpse or an infant they only found a bottle with some brandy in
it, he felt rather small. But the bobby was sharper witted than he.
'There's summut rum about this, sir, or I'm very much mistaken,' he
said; and he was right. There was something 'rum.' The brandy in that
bottle was drugged with morphia; and there is a lot of interviewing of
him going on which points, I believe, although he only winks at me and
fences questions, that the detectives are on the track, and that the
brandy bottle will hang that woman, whoever she is. Dear me! the
curtain is going up. I must return to my friend below. _Entre nous_,
the very fellow I was talking about is in the house to-night. _Au
revoir_, my lord."
Joan contrived to return his bow; she held herself together sufficiently
to wait until he was safely out of the box; then she clutched at
Vansittart as wildly as if she were drowning in deep waters and he was
the forlorn hope, the last available thing to grasp at.
"Take me home, or I shall die," she gasped.